I CANNOT GIVE A DEFINITION TO WHAT I PAINT – Yves Tanguy: spontaneous landscapes with no preconceived ideas

YVES TANGUY 1/6 – He was born and died in January, wrapped in the winters of Paris and Woodbury. In 1924, the surrealism enters his life, reading the magazine “The Surrealist Revolution.” At the age of 28, he exhibited his paintings at the Galerie Au Sacre du Printemps in Paris (with Arp, Ernst and Masson, Miró and Picasso). Despite his lack of formal training, Tanguy’s art developed quickly and his mature style emerged by 1927. YVES TANGUY 2/6 – Soon after joining the Surrealists, he began applying the principles of automatism to his paintings. Tanguy’s paintings have a unique, immediately recognizable style of non-representational surrealism. From the age of 30, he put in his works the images of geological formations, he observed while traveling in Africa. He also participates in events Surrealist group in New York, Brussels, Paris and London. YVES TANGUY 3/6 – Its paintings they show vast, abstract landscapes, mostly in a tightly limited palette of colors, also showing flashes of contrasting color accents. Inside its paintings automatism involves, creating spontaneous associations with no preconceived ideas. In 1939, he meets in Paris the painter Kay Sage, taking with her a trip to the US, where they are married and settled in Woodbury (Connecticut), converting an old farmhouse into an artists’ studio. YVES TANGUY 4/6 – In 1948 assumes a US citizen. Its alien landscapes, are populated with various abstract shapes (sometimes angular and sharp as shards of glass). Like other Surrealist painters, he painted timeless, dreamlike landscapes. YVES TANGUY 5/6 – Its style was an important influence on several younger painters (such as Matta, Paalen and Esteban Francés, who adopted a Surrealist style). At age 53, he visited Rome, Milan and Paris on the occasion of his solo exhibitions, set up in these cities. YVES TANGUY 6/6 – He used a more colourful palette, and he gave the objects in his paintings a more metallic appearance. The Museum of Modern Art in New York organizes a retrospective, a few months after his death. His ashes were scattered on the beach at Douarnenez (in Brittany), together with those of his wife. You can see more on Meeting Benches, looking for: YVES TANGUY (1900/1955), FRENCH PAINTER – A style of painting without a name, without a prison that encloses it