A French Surrealist Artist: Yves Tanguy

Yves Tanguy (Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy) was a French surrealist artist born on 5th January, 1900 in Paris as the son of a retired navy captain of Breton origin. Tanguy joined the merchant navy in 1918 and in 1920 was enlisted into the French Army and served in Tunis. This was the period Tanguy came into contact with the surrealist writer Jacques Prévert.

In 1922, he returned to Paris and decided to become an artist after being inspired by the works of Giorgio de Chirico. Through his friend Jacques Prévert he was introduced to the surrealist artist André Breton in 1925. With no formal art training Tanguy began painting, with his early works being understandably naïve and containing influences of de Chirico. In no time Yves Tanguy developed his own unique style of painting, and held his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1927. It was the year the artist created one of his most important early works, "Mama, Papa Is Wounded!" That year, he also married Jeannette Ducrocq. In 1928 some of his works were published in the magazine, La Révolution Surréaliste. Later he officially joined the Surrealist movement. While some of his paintings of the 1920s contain a clear horizon line to a barren landscape featuring seemingly organic elements, others like "The Lovers" (1929) feature no fixed horizon. It is either a world under water or a depiction of the sky with the organic objects floating around.

Following the breakdown of his marriage in the 1930s, Yves Tanguy became impressed by the work of Kay Sage, an American Surrealist artist living in France at the time, and began a new relationship with her in 1938. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 Kay Sage moved back to the United States and Tanguy followed her. On August 17, 1940 Tanguy married Kay Sage at Reno, Nevada and settled in a farmhouse in Woodbury, Connecticut for the rest of the couple's life. Tanguy became a naturalised citizen of the USA in 1948.

Tanguy used a limited number of colours in his paintings that portrayed abstract landscapes. These landscapes feature abstract shapes that sometimes seem to be organic creatures and sometimes purely material objects. "Extinction of Useless Lights" (1927), "The Hand in the Clouds" (1927), "Surrealist Landscape" (1927), "Old Horizon" (1928), "The Dark Garden" (1928), "The Look of Amber" (1929), "The Lovers" (1929), "Satin Pillow" (1929), "This Morning" (1951), "Multiplication of the Arcs" (1954) and "The Saltimbanques" (1954) are some of his important works. In 1950 he was honoured with a medal when he took part in the American Painting Exhibition.

On January 15th, 1955, Yves Tanguy suffered a fatal stroke at Woodbury. It was also the year when a retrospective of the artist was held by New York's Museum of Modern Art.