Movement, Style, School or Type of Art:
Surrealism
Date and Place of Birth:
January 5, 1900, Paris
Life:
Yves Tanguy came to painting late (in his early 20s) after a work by Giorgio de Chirico fired his imagination and changed his destiny. He taught himself to paint and, at the urging of his friend Andr¨¦ Breton, became an enthusiastic member of the Parisian Surrealist movement in 1925. Through constant work, Tanguy quickly gained assurance as a painter, and recognition for his faintly sinister - and purely Surrealistic - landscapes executed in muted colors and filled with mysterious objects.
He met, and subsequently married, the American Surrealist painter Kay Sage - which led to Tanguy's move to the United States in 1939. Though the country in which he took citizenship (in 1948) was more economically stable than war-torn France, he never achieved the popularity (or sales) that Salvador Dal¨ª enjoyed. Nonetheless, it was Tanguy to whom the next generation of artists turned for inspiration, leaving him with the reputation of a "painter's painter" which continues to this day.
Important Works:
Mama, Papa is Wounded!, 1927
Promontory Palace, 1930
The Sun in Its Jewel Case, 1937
Multiplication of Arches, 1954
Imaginary Numbers, 1954
Date and Place of Death:
January 15, 1955, Woodbury, Connecticut |
