The telephone
In March 1921, the day after her painful break-up with Oskar Serti, the pianist Catherine de Sélys retired definitively to her villa, where, thanks to the kind companions she had there, her wound healed little by little.
Although Catherine never found the strength to see Oskar again, she could not prevent herself from telephoning him regularly. During these conversations, as if to contain the extreme emotion of hearing each other again, both Catherine de Sélys and Oskar Serti, without ever telling each other, took up the habit of doodling. He on the pages of his diary, she in the blank spaces on the magazines left next to the telephone.
As he often visited both Oskar and Catherine, Victor Lurkin, loyal friend and biographer of Oskar Serti, discovered these simultaneous drawings and began to dream of juxtaposing them. In 1959, the death of Oskar Serti left Victor Lurkin exclusive beneficiary to his works. Thus Lurkin was finally able to fulfill his ambition. He brought together Oskar’s now famous diaries and revealed to Catherine de Sélys the telephone correspondence which had secretly linked her to her ex-lover. With her consent, he sought out amongst the pile of magazines, miraculously preserved in the attic of the villa, those drawings which would give evidence of the rare bond between the two.
