L’Oeil Magique

Rare, brilliant, and highly original deck of cards, titled "L’Oeil Magique” (“The Magic Eye”), featuring designs by Belgian artist Charles Pry in which a human eye figures prominently. The deck is one of a limited edition of 300. The deck was self-published by the artist without a tuck box.

Pry was one of the founders of a group of Belgian avant-garde artists known as "La Jeune Peinture Belge," described by the Oxford Dictionary of Art as "an avant-garde artists' association founded in Brussels in 1945 with the aim of holding exhibitions of contemporary Belgian art throughout Europe." The Oxford Dictionary of Art goes on to state: "The members of the group (who included Pierre Alechinsky and Pol Bury) were strongly individualistic and had no common programme, but they were basically abstract in their outlook and were influenced particularly by the expressive abstraction of the post-war École de Paris. The group dissolved in 1948."

As with other Pry decks, the artwork in this deck is sophisticated and childlike at the same time. There are 32 suited cards in the deck (the listing calls it a “piquet” deck – it has Ace and 7-King in each suit), plus 3 Jokers, plus a frontispiece card that announces the deck and gives the deck’s number in the limited edition run. The cards are large, wide cards, measuring approximately 99mm x 63mm – "approximate" in the sense that there are slight differences in the size of the cards since they have been cut by hand. It is unclear to me what kind of material has been used for the cards, but it is not traditional card stock, and it is possible that some kind of linoleum derivative (or at least a linoleum layer) is involved. The backs of this deck are different than the backs shown for these cards in the listing at the World Web Playing Card Museum, perhaps a reflection of the somewhat unusual material employed.