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Lot Essay
The Comité Masson has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
ANDRÉ MASSON
AWAKENING THE DYNAMIC UNCONSCIOUS
“André Masson’s presence on this side of the Atlantic during the war... was of inestimable benefit to us... He, more than anyone else, anticipated the new abstract painting, and I don’t believe he has received enough credit for it.” - Clement Greenberg
André Masson’s extensive oeuvre incorporates a variety of innovative approaches and techniques, throughout his early investigations of Cubism, to his high period of Surrealism and back to nature in the 1950s where he re-entered an Impressionist style of painting. His work is direct, impassioned and psychologically charged, with subjects— or figurative suggestions—at times alternating between
the mysterious, explosive, erotic, violent, brutal, sensual, metaphysical, mythological, and classical, but always with a sense of immediacy and urgency evident in his gesture.
Masson took great interest in psychoanalytic theory, in line with his engagement with Surrealism, inspiring his investigation of automatic art-making processes and motifs exploring of the realm of the subconscious. He furthermore had a familial connection, his brother-in-law being the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Having moved to New York after the outbreak of the Second World War, Masson had a profound impact on the Abstract Expressionists who would emerge in New York in the 1940s, particularly the movement’s best-known proponent Jackson Pollock who immersed himself within the ideas of Jungian psychoanalysis, referencing archetypes and symbols in his work prior to the development of his free-form action paintings. Pollock’s ‘drip’ paintings can largely be seen to have evolved out of automatic painting ideas, Surrealist in nature and furthermore inspired by Native American sand painting.
This group of works spans Masson’s career from the early 1940s into the 1950s, showing his diversity through sculpture, mixed media and painting with examples from three private collections.
Born in Johannesburg and educated at Winchester and Cambridge, Peter Ward-Jackson (1915-2014) worked for MI 6 during WWII. He became an Assistant Keeper at the Department of Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert museum in 1948 and was until his retirement in 1975 Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. His first major book, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, published in 1958, remains the standard work on the subject. This was followed by notable essays and by the catalogue in two volumes of the museum's then little-studied collection of Italian drawings.
ANDRÉ MASSON
AWAKENING THE DYNAMIC UNCONSCIOUS
“André Masson’s presence on this side of the Atlantic during the war... was of inestimable benefit to us... He, more than anyone else, anticipated the new abstract painting, and I don’t believe he has received enough credit for it.” - Clement Greenberg
André Masson’s extensive oeuvre incorporates a variety of innovative approaches and techniques, throughout his early investigations of Cubism, to his high period of Surrealism and back to nature in the 1950s where he re-entered an Impressionist style of painting. His work is direct, impassioned and psychologically charged, with subjects— or figurative suggestions—at times alternating between
the mysterious, explosive, erotic, violent, brutal, sensual, metaphysical, mythological, and classical, but always with a sense of immediacy and urgency evident in his gesture.
Masson took great interest in psychoanalytic theory, in line with his engagement with Surrealism, inspiring his investigation of automatic art-making processes and motifs exploring of the realm of the subconscious. He furthermore had a familial connection, his brother-in-law being the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Having moved to New York after the outbreak of the Second World War, Masson had a profound impact on the Abstract Expressionists who would emerge in New York in the 1940s, particularly the movement’s best-known proponent Jackson Pollock who immersed himself within the ideas of Jungian psychoanalysis, referencing archetypes and symbols in his work prior to the development of his free-form action paintings. Pollock’s ‘drip’ paintings can largely be seen to have evolved out of automatic painting ideas, Surrealist in nature and furthermore inspired by Native American sand painting.
This group of works spans Masson’s career from the early 1940s into the 1950s, showing his diversity through sculpture, mixed media and painting with examples from three private collections.
Born in Johannesburg and educated at Winchester and Cambridge, Peter Ward-Jackson (1915-2014) worked for MI 6 during WWII. He became an Assistant Keeper at the Department of Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert museum in 1948 and was until his retirement in 1975 Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. His first major book, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, published in 1958, remains the standard work on the subject. This was followed by notable essays and by the catalogue in two volumes of the museum's then little-studied collection of Italian drawings.