- 327
YVES TANGUY | Sans titre
Estimate
120,000 - 180,000 GBP
bidding is closed
Description
- Yves Tanguy
- Sans titre
- signed Yves Tanguy and dated 44 (lower right)
- gouache and pencil on paper
- 12 by 26.5cm.,4 3/4 by 10 1/2 in.
- Executed in 1944.
Provenance
Hans & Frida Richter, Southbury, Connecticut (acquired directly from the artist in the early 1950s)
Private Collection, U.S.A. (by descent from the above; sale: Christie's, New York, 8th May 2003, lot 128)
Private Collection, Switzerland (purchased at the above sale; sale: Christie's, London, 8th February 2007, lot 693)
Simon C. Dickinson, London (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Private Collection, U.S.A. (by descent from the above; sale: Christie's, New York, 8th May 2003, lot 128)
Private Collection, Switzerland (purchased at the above sale; sale: Christie's, London, 8th February 2007, lot 693)
Simon C. Dickinson, London (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Literature
Pierre Matisse, Yves Tanguy, Un recueil de ses œuvres, New York, 1963, no. 336, illustrated p. 154
Catalogue Note
Yves Tanguy's career as a painter began in 1922 after the artist saw an early Surrealist work by Giorgio de Chirico at Paul Guillaume's gallery. The profound impact of de Chirico's landscapes compelled Tanguy to join the Surrealist group in 1925, collaborating with André Breton in La Révolution Surréaliste. Tanguy shared with the great 15th century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch a taste for the strange and the inexplicable; his symbol-laden imagery, rendered in masterful detail, seem reliant upon objective reality, yet far removed from any specific reference. It was not until 1927 that Tanguy started painting the dream-like landscapes that would establish him as a major figure of the Surrealist movement. The present work, executed in 1944, contains many of the distinctive qualities that characterise the artist’s signature ‘mind-scapes’. Key sources of Tanguy's imagery were the summers he spent near Finistère in Brittany as a child. It was during these stays that Tanguy observed prehistoric rock formations and objects floating on water or washed up on the shore, elements which, when subjectively transformed, frequently appear in the dream world of Tanguy's painting.
The haunting imagery of Tanguy's works stem from his experience growing up in Europe during the First World War War. Dilapidated buildings, piles of rubble and the bleak terrain of abandoned battlefields were common sites throughout northern France. These spectacles had a significant effect on Surrealist imagery, particularly for Tanguy, whose landscapes capture ‘the sense of empty, abandoned, ghostly wasteland of the war-torn terrain’ (Sidra Stich, Anxious Visions, Surrealist Art (exhibition catalogue), University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, 1990, p. 87).
A slow and scrupulous craftsman, Tanguy loved objects that were beautifully made, and he impaired to the elements in his paintings the same care and convincing presence that a realist painter gives to a still life or landscape. Tanguy depicts the ‘inscapes’ of the mind, represented here as a vast landscape of the imagination with indecipherable protozoan inhabitants, seemingly balanced on the brink between order and chaos. Tanguy stated the following: ‘The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor-surprise to the artist himself as well as to others. I work very irregularly and by crises. Should I see the reasons for my painting, I would feel that it would be a self-imprisonment’ (quoted in ‘The creative process’ in Art Digest, New York, 15th January 1954, vol. 28, no.8 p. 14).
It is the present intention of the Tanguy Committee to include this work in the revised Catalogue raisonné of Tanguy's paintings, gouaches and objects.
The haunting imagery of Tanguy's works stem from his experience growing up in Europe during the First World War War. Dilapidated buildings, piles of rubble and the bleak terrain of abandoned battlefields were common sites throughout northern France. These spectacles had a significant effect on Surrealist imagery, particularly for Tanguy, whose landscapes capture ‘the sense of empty, abandoned, ghostly wasteland of the war-torn terrain’ (Sidra Stich, Anxious Visions, Surrealist Art (exhibition catalogue), University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, 1990, p. 87).
A slow and scrupulous craftsman, Tanguy loved objects that were beautifully made, and he impaired to the elements in his paintings the same care and convincing presence that a realist painter gives to a still life or landscape. Tanguy depicts the ‘inscapes’ of the mind, represented here as a vast landscape of the imagination with indecipherable protozoan inhabitants, seemingly balanced on the brink between order and chaos. Tanguy stated the following: ‘The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor-surprise to the artist himself as well as to others. I work very irregularly and by crises. Should I see the reasons for my painting, I would feel that it would be a self-imprisonment’ (quoted in ‘The creative process’ in Art Digest, New York, 15th January 1954, vol. 28, no.8 p. 14).
It is the present intention of the Tanguy Committee to include this work in the revised Catalogue raisonné of Tanguy's paintings, gouaches and objects.