"Yves Tanguy, the painter of terrifying elegance in the air, in the depths of the earth and the seas, the man I regard as the embodiment of the spiritual virtue of our time : my admirable friend." André Breton
It is a long time since the Malingue gallery has been faithful to Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) and his work. That is the reason why Daniel Malingue wished to organize a Tanguy exhibit this spring and he succeeded in bringing together about forty works by this major Surrealist artist. Part of those oil paintings, gouaches and drawings, illustrating the whole career of the artist, are fore sale, part of them are from private collections, and some of them have not been shown for years.
Soon after the discovery of de Chirico's work, from the platform of a bus, Yves Tanguy began painting, aged 23. Very soon after, he became very close to the Surrealist group and André Breton, who admired and defended him his whole life long. Breton has always considered Tanguy as one of the major surrealist artists.
Tanguy left Europe for the U.S.A. in 1939, and he became one of the artists of the famous Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, until his death in 1955. He settled in Woodbury, Connecticut, having married the American painter Kay Sage. There, he was Alexander Calder's neighbour, and he went on exploring the unconscious world through his paintings, building strange landscapes, under unreal lights, inhabited by various and coloured forms. A rich way for the visitor to travel through a kind of magic, inner world.
A catalogue has been published, with each work reproduced full page in colour, and with contributions by René Le Bihan, Olivier Berggruen and Renée Mabin.