A very rare autograph postcard from the French artist, photographer and writer, to Surrealist poet Robert Desnos. Dated June 1938, with envelope postmarked June 27, 1938. On a postcard with a photograph of a girl picking "Jersey Cabbages," Cahun reports on life in Jersey with partner Suzanne Malherbe [Marcel Moore] and asks for news from Paris. Cahun and Moore had settled there in 1937, and later became active in the Resistance there. Both Cahun and Moore have signed. Envelope with rips and toning, but postcard very fine. 5.5 x 3.5 inches (13.8 x 8.8 cm).

Translated from the French, in full: " 'Do you want to plant cabbages in our way, in our way...etc...' But we aren't planting any cabbages; we don't like them. On the other hand, very nice red beans, which will soon be good I hope, salad, radishes, tomatoes, asparagus, grass and flowers. All this as well as the sea and the sun are keeping up busy—but don't prevent us from thinking fondly of you. It would do good to hear [Youtzi?] talk a little—because I believe we are becoming more and more mute. On the other hand, to hear or read news from Paris would be fun. I did hear that are well—at least, someone wrote me as much. Yours, Claude / Suzanne."

The French artist, photographer and writer Claude Cahun was born Lucy Schwob to an intellectual French Jewish family. Around 1919, she changed her name to Claude Cahun. During the early 1920s, she settled in Paris with her lifelong partner and step-sibling Suzanne Malherbe, who adopted the only slightly less equivocal pseudonym "Marcel Moore". For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Malherbe collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages. The two published articles and novels, notably in the periodical "Mercure de France", and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange and Robert Desnos. Cahun's work was both political and personal, and often undermined traditional concepts of gender roles.

In 1937 Cahun and Malherbe settled in Jersey. Following the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and the other Channel Islands, they became active as resistance workers and propagandists. The two used snippets of BBC reports on the Nazis to create poetic anti-German fliers, which they then distributed clandestinely to German soldiers. In many ways, Cahun and Malherbe's resistance efforts were not only political but artistic actions, using their creative talents to manipulate and undermine the authority which they despised.