DOROTHEA TANNING

Born August 25, 1910, Galesburg, Illinois

The surreal imagery of Tanning’s paintings from the 1940s and early 50s and her close friendships with artists and writers of the Surrealist Movement have led many to regard Tanning as a Surrealist painter. Yet she developed her own individual style over the course of a career that spans six decades. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she continued to paint precise figurative renderings of dream-like situations, working in New York City, Sedona, and Paris. She also formed enduring friendships with, among others, Marcel Duchamp, Roland Penrose, Lee Miller, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, and George Balanchine, for whom she designed sets and costumes for several ballets, including The Night Shadow (1945).

By the mid-50s, her work had radically changed. As Tanning explains, "Around 1955 my canvases literally splintered . . . I broke the mirror, you might say.” In this period, Tanning’s images became increasingly fragmented and prismatic. By the late 1960s, Tanning’s paintings were almost completely abstract, yet there are always suggestions of the female form. During these years, Tanning was also an active printmaker, working in ateliers of Georges Visat and Pierre Chave and collaborating on a number of artists’ books with such poets as such as André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Lena Leclerq. From 1969-73, Tanning concentrated on a body of three-dimensional work, soft, fabric sculptures, five of which comprise the installation Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (1970–73) that is now in the permanent collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.