André Masson

Acquis de l'artiste par la famille du propriétaire actuel

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. There are 5 artist's pinholes in the upper corners. The sheet is slightly wavy with some very light flattened creases, especially in the right part of the composition. Apart from some frame discolouration along the edges, this work is in very good condition.
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pen and ink on paper. Executed in 1938. 

Etude pour Pasiphaé, encre sur papier (verso de l'œuvre)

 

SIX DESSINS EXCEPTIONELS D'ANDRÉ MASSON

Fig. 1, André Masson dans son atelier à New Preston (Connecticut), vers 1944

Cet ensemble de six dessins provenant d'une collection privée française atteste du génie graphique de Masson. Représentant du surréalisme auquel il adhère en 1924, il semble avoir hérité de ce qui était à l'origine un mouvement essentiellement littéraire, le sens de l'écriture et du trait détourné.

Entre ces dessins qui constituent des créations originales et des univers à part entière, le motif qui fait le lien est celui de la  métamorphose. Le trait est à ce point poussé que les auteurs appellent  "Métamorphoses" un cycle d'œuvres dont les prémices remontent à 1922. "Si Masson n'en était, dans l'immédiat peut-être pas tout à fait conscient, il n'ignorait pas à quel point il avait assimilé le concept d'Héraclite sur l'éternel devenir. Le changement profond et entier de l'essence et de la forme, la métamorphose, est le fondement principal de la thématique de la peinture d'André Masson" (Sandor Kuthy, in Masson, Massacres, Métamorphoses, Mythologie (catalogue d'exposition), Berne, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1996, pp. 50-51).

Dans chacun de ces dessins, exemplaires de virtuosité, la ligne est flux, organique, dynamique incessante. Partant d'une forme définie et identifiable, elle s'aventure dans les marges et revient, vibrante d'autres sens, composer des univers  "utopiques" : des lieux de non-lieux où l'imagination est reine.

 

SIX EXCEPTIONAL WORKS ON PAPER BY ANDRÉ MASSON

This group of six drawings from a private French collection attests to the Masson's genius as a draughtsman. Embracing Surrealism in 1924, he seems to have inherited a universe of wiritng and imagingation from what essentially began as a literary movement.

These drawings consitute original creations and complete self-contained universes, linked by the common theme of metamorphosis. This feature is so characteristic of his œuvre at this time that historians employed the term "Metamorphoses" to refer to a series of works whose origins stretch back to 1922. "Though Masson was not entirely conscious of it at the time, he was aware of the extent to which he had assimilated Heraclites' concept of the eternal becoming. The profound, total change of the essence of the form, the metamorphosis, is the principal foundation of the thematics of Masson's painting" (Sandor Kuthy, in Masson, Massacres, Métamorphoses, Mythologie (exhibition catalogue), Berne, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1996, pp. 50-51).

Each of these drawings is an example of virtuosity, with fluid lines and shapes, flowing, organic and constantly dynamic. Beginning with a definite, identifiable form, it wanders to the margins and turns, vibrantly, in other directions, to compose "utopian" universes: the existent and non-existent places that are the realm of the imagination.