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Email to FriendSigned Andre Masson, Lithograph, Satan  |
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| Artist: | Masson, Andre (1896 - 1987) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Satan |
| Medium: | Lithograph in Colors |
| Image Size: | 24 1/4 in x 16 in (61.6 cm x 40.6 cm) |
| Framed Size: | 38 in x 32 in (96.5 cm x 81.3 cm) |
| Signed: | Hand signed by André Masson (1896 – 1987) in pencil in the lower right margin. |
| Edition: | Numbered 84/125 in pencil in the lower left |
| Condition: | This work is in pristine condition, the colors are bright and fresh |
| Gallery Price: Item# 2223 | Sorry, this item is sold |
| Historical Description: | |
|---|---|
Extremely intricate and full of detail, this work evokes a sense of energy and movement. As one of the foremost Surrealist artist’s, Masson encouraged his viewer to interpret his work not merely on a literal level but rather on both a conscious and subconscious level. Part of a portfolio comprising five lithographs, this image is printed on Arches paper and is signed in pencil by the artist in the lower right and numbered 84/125 in the lower left. The work was printed by Mourlot, Paris. Confronting the viewer with a figure lying in the foreground, the head of this individual appears displaced from the rest of body. Combining realistic elements in unrealistic situations, Masson uses the Surrealist notion of taking reality and turning it upside down. Executed with a sense of frenzied energy, this work is designed with a multitude of activity and variety of colored elements in yellows, reds and greens with a range of black lines. Surrounded in the front by pleasant flowers and nature, the more threatening is revealed behind the figure with volcanic activity and smoke billowing up into the sky. Giving the viewer a sense of simultaneous calmness and chaos, this work expresses the artist’s intention of confronting the universal lot of man. About the Framing: | |
| Style: | Braque/ Picasso Cubism, 20th Century Modern Master Cubist |
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Biography of Andre Masson
Andre Masson (1896 - 1987)
French painter, b. 1896 in Balagny. The work of Andre Masson has an important place in the development of Surrealism. He began his studies before 1914, at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He served in the Great War in the fighting lines, and was severely wounded. The war experience of Masson affected him very deeply. The abnormal realities of trench warfare, with its domination by extreme violence, its immediate contiguity of life and death, presented questions of the motivation of human behaviour. His work has been an essay in confronting life at that-level of experience. Masson went to Paris in 1922, and associated with Miro and with the poets. Armand Salacrou, Michel Leiris and Georges Limbour. His interest in the deeper reality of man's behaviour drew him to Surrealism. In 1924 he met Andre Breton, joined the Surrealist group, and exhibited with them for some years. He became very involved with non-rational purpose in art, in developing drawing and painting as nearly as possible as direct thought transference. With Miro he produced 'automatic' drawings. These allowed the free movement of the pen line, without pre-thought or condition of any kind. To obtain the same effect in painting, Masson used drawn confinuous lines of glue on the canvas, adding the colour by coating with different Coloured sands.
Very early in his career Masson relinquished any desire to construct paintings on Cubist or any other lines. For him painting has not been a contrived art, a matter of developing a style. It had to be a part of life itself, a 'way of knowing' simultaneous with a way of action; admitting the violent, the erotic, the chaotic, spurning any rationally formulated order. In 1940 he exiled himself to America. Masson's Surrealist ideas found the new soil productive, and. his influence on American painting was strong. In particular Arshile Gorky drew on it, as did Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Pollock's Action Painting has much in common with Masson's early sand paintings, and with his automatism of method. He returned to Paris in 1945. He designed the scenery for a production of Hamlet in 1946, and for Berg's opera Wozzeck in 1963. He had before the war been concerned in a similar way with various productions. Masson's life work represents a series of periods of exploration, for his personal purpose, of various techniques, varying from full, rich polychrome to monochrome and purely linear work. On occasions involving closely defined biomorphic images, his work is characterized by extreme speed of execution and complex personal imagery.
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