MIKA / ROLAND VILLENEUVE, L'Univers diabolique, Librairie-Galerie L'Envers du Miroir, Paris, 1972

Issued for Monday 13 March 1972, 18h–24h: Roland Villeneuve signing his newly published L'Univers diabolique (Albin Michel), alongside a presentation of the “dessins fantastiques de MIKA,” on view at Librairie-Galerie L'Envers du Miroir, 28 rue Henri Barbusse, Paris 5e, through 14 April.

The recto carries only the image, MIKA’s name and the exhibition dates: a spectral hooded figure mounted on a pale horse, with a smaller form falling or trailing alongside. The verso changes register completely. Librairie and Galerie flank an emblem of a hand holding an oval mirror between two radiant, opposed faces, the gallery’s name contained inside the glass — the device signed in miniature “J.N.” Below, the event is arranged with the hierarchy of a book title page: author, book, publisher, then artist, while the hours and address are displaced to the lower corners.

Villeneuve was a specialist in demonology and esotericism whose library of roughly 700 volumes, together with manuscripts, correspondence and iconographic material, later entered the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. His presence here places the card within a sustained intellectual and publishing history rather than a one-off supernatural theme. That same year L'Envers du Miroir presented the Czech Surrealist and hermeticist Martin Stejskal in a solo exhibition, independently documented in his exhibition history. The invitation sits within a small but identifiable programme connecting Surrealism, fantastic art, books and esoteric culture.

Two connections remain deliberately unresolved. The gallery shares its name with an earlier Paris publishing collection, Éditions Robert Marin’s L’Envers du miroir, directed by Henri Parisot from the late 1940s and associated with covers by Max Ernst and Toyen. No continuity between that publishing project and the 1972 gallery has yet been established. Likewise, the “J.N.” responsible for the gallery emblem remains unidentified.

No independent public record of this MIKA exhibition has yet been located: no second example of the invitation, no accompanying catalogue, and no contemporary exhibition listing. This does not establish rarity. It does, however, make the card unusually valuable as primary documentation of how the exhibition was announced and represented at the time.

Two-sided card; monochrome reproduction of a drawing by MIKA to recto; illustrated gallery emblem and typographic announcement to verso. 10.5 × 13.5 cm. Librairie-Galerie L’Envers du Miroir, Paris, 1972.

Condition: Very good. Light toning and minor handling and surface marks consistent with age; well preserved overall.