Dorothea Margaret Tanning (American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet) 1910 - 2012
Desjobert (printer)
Maurice Gantner (printer)
Cinquième Péril, from the portfolio Les 7 Périls Spectraux, 1949
5. Le péril du calme, les heures sépulcrales du jour. (The peril of calm, the sepulchral hours of the day)
color lithograph on paper
20 x 12 3/4 in. (50.8 x 32.4 cm.) sheet
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., United States of America
Galesburg, where nothing happens but the wallpaper.
A day of high wind. A regular hurricane that blew down one of the three poplars in front of our house. My mother was terrified. So I was born. The following perils were thus created:
1. The peril of angels and geniuses
2. The peril of flexible cruelties
3. The peril of the square root
4. The peril of joining the immortals
5. The peril of calm, the sepulchral hours of the day
6. The peril of the sea on the floor
7. The peril of white
Should everything be told, the whole truth? This is Galesburg, Illinois, my birthplace. This is my father's desk, my father from Sweden: Andreas Peter Georg Thaning was seventeen years old when he came to America. He never left. There are letters spread around on his desk and more letters in the pigeon-holes. We must not touch them, they are family letters. We must not touch anything on this desk. So we will never know much about his past. Mother says that he left a great family back there, with a beautiful house, stables, lands. Why should I care? For he can draw a horse so well you'd think it was ready to talk (Mother's words). And here is the pure truth about my father: he was horse-crazy. We see him there in the vestibule of that beautiful house in Skone, Sweden, his suitcase beside him. He is waiting to say goodbye to his father. (Had he not already lost his mother at the time?) But his father does not come down. Barricaded behind his pince-nez and his pretentions (there is a photograph of the old codger actually wearing a monocle, can you imagine?) he repudiates the boy. And Andreas the renegade goes his way, never to return. In his blue eyes the reflexion of a vision: the Far West.
But the desk full of letters is in Illinois. How did my father wind up in this Godforsaken town, how could he prefer it to the beautiful house in Skone? Here is no sign of the far west nor of the horses he had dreamed of taming. Nothing but his marvelous way of drawing a horse, a wild horse with defiant eye, drawn on any old scrap of paper that came to hand....
* * *
Dorothea Tanning was born at Galesburg, Illinois. Worked as a librarian, studied at Knox College and later supported herself in New York as a commercial artist and by odd jobs connected with the arts. Read voraciously, visited museums and began to paint without instruction. Deeply impressed by the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1936. Early paintings mainly inspired by childhood fantasies and nightmares. Met Max Ernst in 1942 and was introduced by him to the Surrealists then living in New York. First one-woman exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 1944. Married Ernst in 1946 and settled at Sedona, Arizona, later moving with him to France. Designed decor for Balanchine's The Night Shadow 1946 and several other ballets. In the mid 1950s her paintings became semi-abstract, with mysterious erotic or violent imagery as it were enveloped in mist. Since 1965 has also made some sculpture.
Her 100th birthday, on 25 August 2010, was marked by a number of exhibitions during the year.
In 2012 she died aged 101.
Desjobert (printer)
Maurice Gantner (printer)
Cinquième Péril, from the portfolio Les 7 Périls Spectraux, 1949
5. Le péril du calme, les heures sépulcrales du jour. (The peril of calm, the sepulchral hours of the day)
color lithograph on paper
20 x 12 3/4 in. (50.8 x 32.4 cm.) sheet
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., United States of America
Galesburg, where nothing happens but the wallpaper.
A day of high wind. A regular hurricane that blew down one of the three poplars in front of our house. My mother was terrified. So I was born. The following perils were thus created:
1. The peril of angels and geniuses
2. The peril of flexible cruelties
3. The peril of the square root
4. The peril of joining the immortals
5. The peril of calm, the sepulchral hours of the day
6. The peril of the sea on the floor
7. The peril of white
Should everything be told, the whole truth? This is Galesburg, Illinois, my birthplace. This is my father's desk, my father from Sweden: Andreas Peter Georg Thaning was seventeen years old when he came to America. He never left. There are letters spread around on his desk and more letters in the pigeon-holes. We must not touch them, they are family letters. We must not touch anything on this desk. So we will never know much about his past. Mother says that he left a great family back there, with a beautiful house, stables, lands. Why should I care? For he can draw a horse so well you'd think it was ready to talk (Mother's words). And here is the pure truth about my father: he was horse-crazy. We see him there in the vestibule of that beautiful house in Skone, Sweden, his suitcase beside him. He is waiting to say goodbye to his father. (Had he not already lost his mother at the time?) But his father does not come down. Barricaded behind his pince-nez and his pretentions (there is a photograph of the old codger actually wearing a monocle, can you imagine?) he repudiates the boy. And Andreas the renegade goes his way, never to return. In his blue eyes the reflexion of a vision: the Far West.
But the desk full of letters is in Illinois. How did my father wind up in this Godforsaken town, how could he prefer it to the beautiful house in Skone? Here is no sign of the far west nor of the horses he had dreamed of taming. Nothing but his marvelous way of drawing a horse, a wild horse with defiant eye, drawn on any old scrap of paper that came to hand....
* * *
Dorothea Tanning was born at Galesburg, Illinois. Worked as a librarian, studied at Knox College and later supported herself in New York as a commercial artist and by odd jobs connected with the arts. Read voraciously, visited museums and began to paint without instruction. Deeply impressed by the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1936. Early paintings mainly inspired by childhood fantasies and nightmares. Met Max Ernst in 1942 and was introduced by him to the Surrealists then living in New York. First one-woman exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 1944. Married Ernst in 1946 and settled at Sedona, Arizona, later moving with him to France. Designed decor for Balanchine's The Night Shadow 1946 and several other ballets. In the mid 1950s her paintings became semi-abstract, with mysterious erotic or violent imagery as it were enveloped in mist. Since 1965 has also made some sculpture.
Her 100th birthday, on 25 August 2010, was marked by a number of exhibitions during the year.
In 2012 she died aged 101.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario