Kurt Seligmann

Artcurial-Centre d’Art Plastique Contemporain, Paris

Galerie de Seine, Paris (acquired by 1981)

Acquired from the above by the present owner on 18th April 1985

Paris, Galerie de Seine, Surréalisme et abstraction, 1928-1958, 1981

Cahors, Musée de Cahors, Changer la Vue. André Breton et la révolution surréaliste du regard, 1986, no. 197, illustrated in the catalogue

Milan, Palazzo Reale, I surrealisti, 1989, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle, Die Surrealisten, 1989-90, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Saint-Louis, Espace d'Art Contemporain Fernet-Branca, Chassé-croisé Dada-Surréaliste 1916-1969, 2012, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Georges Sebbag, Memorabilia: constellations inaperçues: Dada & Surréalisme 1916-1970, Paris, 2010, illustrated in colour p. 68

The canvas is unlined. There are some scattered spots of minor retouching, predominantly to the left and right edges, and a few small spots of retouching in the upper centre, visible under ultra-violet light. There are also some lines of fluorescence, consistent with the artist's technique. This work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although slightly fresher and more nuanced in the original.
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Painted in 1950, Witches is a wonderfully baroque undertaking composed of quasi-figurative shapes communing together amidst an arrangement of geometric forms. In 1930 Seligmann joined the circle of artists, writers and poets surrounding André Breton in Paris and he remained an ardent painter of the sinister, sublime and surreal for the remainder of his career. Seligmann was fascinated by the occult and this informed his idiosyncratic contribution to the Surrealist movement. His paintings from the 1930s in Paris until his death in America were primarily composed of imaginative settings and a pictorial language developed from dreams and fantasies. As Seligmann stated in vivid terms: ‘Imagination is the most important element in the creative process. The painter must imagine wholly what he wants to depict and through his imaginative capacities he endows with real life the spectres of thought. If he wants to paint fire he must be fire […] The intelligible wants to descend into a bodily form. This descent is achieved in steps: the imagined has to undergo an ordeal… This eludes explanation. It is a magic rape consummated upon the white sheet of paper or canvas’ (K. Seligmann, ‘How I Work’, in Art News, September 1947).

In 1939 he joined the Surrealist exodus to New York where he met Duchamp, Man Ray, Miró and Tanguy. Latterly he was attached to the History of Art Department at Brooklyn College where he began to design costumes for the theatre. The theatrical milieu in which he mixed perhaps influenced his mature works such as Witches, in which the dramatisation of the figures and backdrop are reminiscent of the stage.