André Masson

Galerie Simon, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1925-26)
Private Collection
Galleria Milano, Milan
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (by 1960)
Acquired before 1976

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Houston, Museum of Fine Art; Paris, Grand Palais, André Masson, 1976-77, illustrated p. 112

L’Etoile was painted in 1925, the year that was not only particularly rich and productive for Masson, but one of great personal importance for the artist for his entry into the group centered around Georges Bataille.  During that year, he painted several canvases executed in earthy tones, in which a nude male or female figure appears to be standing in what resembles an architectural niche, or bursting through a brick wall.  Constructed out of sharp diagonal lines and intersecting geometrical and organic forms, the present work appears to be among the most abstract of the series.  A female body occupying the center of the composition is framed by a door-like opening, emanating prisms of light and surrounded by a proliferation of anatomical parts.

Writing about the iconography of this series of paintings, Carolyn Lanchner commented: "Masson’s imagery had always reflected a heavier dependence on analogical than on strictly logical thought processes, and the prevailing influence of automatic drawing in 1925 intensified this tendency. In this year there are virtually no still lifes as such, and correspondences between forms are counterpointed with dizzying virtuosity in the often tightly packed compositions.  Cosmic allusions are pervasive, as titles such as The Meteors and The Constellations indicate" (Carolyn Lanchner, "André Masson: Origins and Development", in André Masson (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 110).  Indeed, the woman’s body parts become separate elements and, together with the surrounding features, form a cluster of cosmic articles, a constellation of organic forms.  The pear to the right of the figure, symbolic of the woman’s fertility, echoes the shape of her belly, the central feature of the composition.  The star, or the sun appearing behind the clouds in the top right, adds a dramatic play of light and shadow to this mysterious ensemble.