Duchamp, Marcel and Vitaly Halberstadt. Opposition et Cases Conjuguées.

Opposition und Schwesterfelder is a remarkable chess book co-authored by Marcel Duchamp and Vitali Halberstadt, originally published in 1932 and reissued by Tropen Verlag in 2001. It’s a deep dive into the geometry and logic of pawn endgames, focusing on the concepts of opposition and corresponding squares—or as the title suggests, “sister squares.”

What makes this book stand out is its blend of rigorous analysis and artistic sensibility. Duchamp, better known as a pioneering Dadaist and conceptual artist, was also a serious chess player. His collaboration with Halberstadt resulted in a work that’s both intellectually rich and visually engaging, featuring an unusually large number of diagrams to clarify complex endgame ideas.

The authors challenge traditional notions by proposing that opposition is just a special case of a broader concept—Schwesterfelder—and they trace this idea back to 19th-century endgame theorists like Abbé Durand. The book is dense, philosophical, and not for beginners, but it’s a cult classic among advanced players and chess aesthetes.    

174 pages. Tropen Verlag 2001. 

Condition: VG. REPRINT. 

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