Untitled

Tanguy shared with the great 15th century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch a taste for strange and inexplicable symbol-laden imagery, alchemical references, crowds of jostling figures, as well a careful precision in their rendering. A slow and meticulous craftsman, Tanguy loved objects that were beautifully made, and he imparted to the elements in his paintings the same care and convincing presence that a realist painter gives to a still life or landscape. These 'inscapes' of the mind, depicted here as a vast interior landscape of the imagination with indiscribable protozoan inhabitants, seem balanced on the brink between order and chaos. 'The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor-surprise to the artist himself as well as to others,' Tanguy stated. 'I work very irregularly and by crises. Should I seek the reasons for my painting, I would feel that it would be a self-imprisonment' (quoted in 'The creative process', in Art Digest, New York, 15 January 1954, vol. 28, no. 8, p. 14).