Yves Tanguy or Enchanted Surrealism
Tanguy chose to abolish apparent reality to replace it with interior scenery which are precise descriptions in which nothing, however, is identifiable.
Born in 1900, the self-taught painter had often visited Brittany in the summer. In 1923. Although he had never touched a paintbrush, his vocation as a painter became obvious when he discovered a work by Chirico, “Le cerveau de lenfant” (The Child’s Brain) in the window of a Parisian merchant’s boutique.
As a child, Yves Tanguy lived in Plestin-lès-Grèves, between 1907 and 1911, then in Locronan, from 1912 to 1918. His work is nourished by his childhood memories, reactivated by happy summer stays and escapades around the Bay of Douarnenez, in the company of Jacques Prévert and Marcel Duhamel.
1925. He met Jacques Prévert during his military service who opened up the door to surrealism for him. Tanguy joined, illico presto, the movement.
His Breton roots had not escaped his surrealist friends, who had nicknamed him ‘the Guide to the time of the mistletoe druids’.
In 1927, his series of 23 paintings, without individual titles were exhibited at the Surrealist Gallery in Paris.
In 1939. He returned to the United States in the company of his new American wife.
Yves Tanguy’s soul hovers somewhere in the Bay of Douarnenez, where his ashes were scattered after his death in the United States in 1955. After his death, one of these paintings was acquired in 1983 by the Brest Museum. The painting was, in the United States, the property of a Swiss collector. A regional acquisition fund allowed its return to Brittany.
