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Artist or Maker: Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)

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Provenance: Anonymous sale, Hôtel Drouot, Etienne Libert, 27 February 1973, lot 25.
André François Petit, by whom (probably) acquired at the above sale.
Private collection, Switzerland, by whom acquired from the above circa 1974 and thence by descent to the present owner.

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Literature: D. Marchesseau, J. Saucet, E. Filipacchi, Yves Tanguy, Paris, 1973, p. 18 (illustrated).

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Notes: THE PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

The present work will be included in the forthcoming Yves Tanguy catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Pierre and Gaetana Matisse Foundation.

Sans titre is one of the first of the great mediumistic landscapes that established Tanguy's artistic breakthrough to maturity in the latter part of 1926. Reflecting a range of influence from his fellow Surrealists, these extraordinary paintings not only articulated a wholly new and bizarre world of pictorial form unique to Tanguy's imagination, but they also established a largely autonomous working method of painting to which Tanguy would stick for the rest of his life.

Soon to transform themselves into strange undersea landscapes often seen to be reflective of Tanguy's close relationship with the sea (as a child of the Breton coastline and a former merchant Seaman), the very first of these works appear to depict strange archetypal beachside scenes. Like such other works from this period as L'extinction des lumières (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Mort guettant sa famille, (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) the horizon-line of Sans titre is punctuated by a de Chirico-esque tower or pyramid, here inscribed with strange gradations and geometric marks signifying an occult mystery. This tower, from which a mediumistic cloud appears to be emanating, in a manner similar to descriptions given in Charles Richet's traité de métaphsychique, is echoed by a smaller more solid-looking pyramid at the right of the painting. Both are observed by a humanoid figure reclining at the bottom of the canvas, his head, like that of the two towers, apparently fuelling a mystic aura-like emanation.

Tanguy's method of creation was simple. He would first establish a horizon and then 'autonomously', without planning or thinking, begin to articulate topographical elements within it according to its mood. Each of these, in turn, would prompt another until an evocative pictorial enigma was established. In this way Tanguy, who at this time, along with André Breton, had immersed himself in a study of psychic phenomena, was attempting to give pictorial form to the mysterious workings of his unconscious mind. In the extraordinary mental landscapes that he created at this time, Tanguy established an entirely new avenue of Surrealist expression that anticipated much of the movement's art in the 1930s.

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