The Davis Museum at Wellesley College Opens "The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage & Yves Tanguy"

Written by Joanne Jesperson Monday, 17 October 2011 22:19

Wellesley, Massachusetts. - The Davis Museum at Wellesley College is proud to present "Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy", the first major touring exhibition to explore the dynamic exchange of ideas that shaped the astonishing landscapes of these Surrealist artists. This groundbreaking exhibition, which features approximately 25 paintings along with selected ephemera by each artist, provides unprecedented access to the couple’s intertwined artistic and personal lives. Sage and Tanguy were inseparable throughout their 15-year marriage, sharing adjoining studios in Woodbury, CT and communicating only in French until Tanguy’s untimely death in 1955. As Karen Rosenberg writes in the New York Times, this “fascinating” exhibition “intently explores the couple’s sinister dreamscapes of polymorphous pebbles (his) and menacing monoliths (hers).” Both artists sought to create paintings that the French poet André Breton called “peinture-poésie,” a style influenced by poetry and dream-like imagery. "Double Solitaire" is on view at the museum from October 19th through January 15th 2012.

Kay Sage was born in Albany, New York the second daughter of a prosperous upper middle class family, Henry Manning Sage and Annie Wheeler Ward. She attended the Foxcroft School, in Virginia, where she became the life long friend of Flora Payne Whitney, heiress to the Whitney, Payne and Vanderbilt fortunes, and one of the founders of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Much of Kay's youth was spent traveling around Europe with her mother, a free spirit whose ample means allowed her to indulge an unquenchable wanderlust. Sage settled down in Rapallo, Italy, to pursue art studies in Rome in the early 1920s. In 1924 she met Prince Ranieri di San Faustino, an Italian nobleman who became her first husband. But the life of the idle rich did not satisfy her and after ten years in the social circuit she would later call "a stagnant swamp," she separated from her husband and began to pursue her artistic ambitions in earnest. Sage gravitated to Paris and became associated with the Surrealist movement. At first she was not precisely warmly regarded by the surrealists, perhaps because of her aristocratic, privileged background as the "Princess San Faustino." In 1938 she was introduced to fellow painter Yves Tanguy by her friend Heinz Henghes and began a long-term relationship with him. At the outbreak of World War II, Sage moved back to the United States and arranged for several of her French fellow artists to take refuge in America, including Tanguy, who would soon become her second husband. Sage and Tanguy were married in Reno, Nevada on 17 August 1940. After the war, the couple bought an old farmhouse in Woodbury, Connecticut and converted it into an artists' studio. They would spend the rest of their lives painting there. When Tanguy died in 1955, Sage was deeply affected. She painted less and less, her once witty poetry turned wry and cynical, and she became a virtual recluse. What little energy she could summon was spent mostly on defending Tanguy's work against the critics and preparing a catalogue of Tanguy's works. Sage's turn away from painting had more to do with failing eyesight than her depression over losing Tanguy. She traveled to Boston for painful and ultimately unsuccessful eye surgeries. But despite her loss of vision, Sage continued to create magnificent artworks. In 1961, the Viviano Gallery in New York City presented an exhibit of Sage's constructions and poetry, entitled "Your Move." The constructions were three-dimensional works made out of diverse materials, including wire, stones, and bullets. Many of these works are now in the collection of the Mattatuck Museum, located in Waterbury not far from where Sage lived. The Mattatuck is also the repository for much of Sage's pre-Surrealist work and some of her personal effects. A first suicide attempt in 1959 failed. The second one succeeded, on January 8, 1963, three days after Tanguy's birthday (January 5). She was 64 years old. Her ashes were scattered on the coast of Brittany, together with those of her husband by their friend Pierre Matisse.

Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin. After his father's death in 1908, his mother moved back to her native Locronan, Finistère, and he ended up spending much of his youth living with various relatives. In 1918, Yves Tanguy briefly joined the merchant navy before being drafted into the Army, where he befriended Jacques Prévert. At the end of his military service in 1922, he returned to Paris, where he worked various odd jobs. By chance, he stumbled upon a painting by Giorgio de Chirico and was so deeply impressed he resolved to become a painter himself in spite of his complete lack of formal training. Tanguy had a habit of being completely absorbed by the current painting he was working on. This way of creating artwork may have been due to his very small studio which only had enough room for one wet piece. Through his friend Jacques Prévert, in around 1924 Tanguy was introduced into the circle of surrealist artists around André Breton. Tanguy quickly began to develop his own unique painting style, giving his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1927, and marrying his first wife later that same year. During this busy time of his life, André Breton gave Tanguy a contract to paint 12 pieces a year. With his fixed income, he painted less and only ended up creating eight works of art for Breton. Throughout the 1930s, Tanguy adopted the bohemian lifestyle of the struggling artist with gusto, leading eventually to the failure of his first marriage. In 1938, after seeing the work of fellow artist Kay Sage, Tanguy began a relationship with her that would eventually lead to his second marriage. With the outbreak of World War II, Sage moved back to her native New York, and Tanguy, judged unfit for military service, followed her. He would spend the rest of his life in the United States. Sage and Tanguy were married in Reno, Nevada on August 17, 1940. Toward the end of the war, the couple moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, converting an old farmhouse into an artists' studio. They spent the rest of their lives there. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In January 1955, Tanguy suffered a fatal stroke at Woodbury. His body was cremated and his ashes preserved until Sage's death in 1963. Later, his ashes were scattered by his friend Pierre Matisse on the beach at Douarnenez in his beloved Brittany, together with those of his wife.


The Davis Museum and Cultural Center traces its origins to the October 23, 1889 dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building on the Wellesley College campus. It housed collections that dated to the founding of the College in 1875, when founder Henry Fowle Durant (1822-81) began a campaign to acquire original paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, as well as plaster casts of classical sculpture, in service of a liberal arts education for women. Drawing and painting were integral to the first curriculum at the College; when Wellesley introduced the teaching of art history in 1885, it distinguished itself as one of the first American colleges to offer the subject. Alice Van Vechten Brown, appointed in 1897 as museum director and head of the art department, modeled the new institution after the populist South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum) in London. In keeping with Wellesley’s emphasis on learning and community service, Brown described the museum as “a place for classes and students, but also a place in which the public may linger and enjoy; a place to bring children, and in which teachers may study; a model to every college student of what a museum may do for any town in the land.” Brown is best known for her development of an influential art history curriculum, which focused on original art objects and was later called “The Wellesley Method.” With the opening of the Jewett Arts Center in 1958, the visual arts at Wellesley entered a new era. Studios, classrooms, and offices provided students and faculty with new teaching and work areas. A dedicated gallery space offered a place for the study of Wellesley’s growing permanent collections and an opportunity to see temporary exhibitions.The Museum’s collections expanded significantly through the next decade, particularly with the donation of a number of important modern works in honor of John McAndrew. By 1982, the Museum’s holdings had doubled in size and the institution, previously administered by the Art Department, became an independent entity within the College. The early 1980s also found the gallery in Jewett devoted exclusively to the display of special exhibitions. The need for dedicated, professionally maintained space in which to safeguard and exhibit the Museum’s permanent collections, along with a concomitant desire to maintain Wellesley’s leadership in arts education, prompted a call for enhanced facilities. In 1988, Trustee and alumna Kathryn Wasserman Davis (Class of 1928) and her husband Shelby Cullom Davis gave the cornerstone gift to the campaign specifically to benefit the construction of a new museum. In 1993, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center opened its doors in a new building designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, Rafael Moneo. This facility, Moneo’s first North American commission, immediately distinguished the Davis among its academic museum peers, and among the art museums and cultural institutions of the Greater Boston area. The building also rearticulated and revitalized the longstanding commitment to the central role of the visual arts in undergraduate liberal arts education at Wellesley College. Visit the musuem's website at ... https://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~