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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the artist's estate signed by Dr. Andreas Neufert and dated 19 April 2017.
The Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen was involved with the Surrealist movement off and on in Europe, Mexico and the United States. His first serious participation with the group came in 1938 when he became involved with the design for the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Paris. There, with Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Man Ray he helped to create one of the first art “environments” or what are known today as “installations.” The mannequin Paalen decorated resembled a totemic entity covered with vines and mushrooms that evoked the mysterious forces of nature, themes his work would take up later with greater intensity. Struggling under the burden of traumatic loss in childhood, Paalen sought to contact and make visible otherworldly dimensions utilizing a variety of techniques related to Surrealism’s use of psychic automatism. One of his greatest innovations was the development and use of what he termed “fumage” or “smoke” paintings that were created by passing paper or canvas over a candle flame that left flickering smoky traces. Paalen would then build upon these random markings, adding colors and brushstrokes to create ephemeral whirlwinds that resemble mediumistic channelings of telluric forces.
With his wife, the poet and later painter Alice Rahon, Paalen moved to Mexico in 1939, accompanied by their friend and benefactor, the Swiss photographer Eva Sulzer. With the help of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, they settled nearby in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City. In 1940, with the assistance of the Peruvian poet César Moro and his friend André Breton (who remained in Paris) he opened the now legendary International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galería de Arte Mexicano founded by Inés Amor. While in Mexico he housed artist visitors such as Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Robert Motherwell as well as Remedios Varo and her partner Benjamin Péret, both of whom would later settle in Mexico. In spring of 1942 Paalen launched an art journal titled DYN that published five issues between 1942 and 1944. He used this journal to express his interests in a variety of subjects such as quantum theory, totemism, and cave painting, in addition to more political topics including dialectical materialism. Extremely influential, especially to the developing generation of Abstract Expressionist artists in New York, DYN established Paalen’s reputation as an innovative thinker and theorist.
In 1952 Paalen returned to Paris, perhaps to reconcile with the Surrealists with whom he had broken off contact after his scandalous essay “Farewell to Surrealism” published in the first issue of DYN. Renting Kurt Seligman’s Villa Seurat in Paris, Paalen renewed his relationship with Breton, spending his summers with him at his house in the charming medieval town of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, before returning to Mexico in 1954. During his stay in France he painted a number of masterful canvases that display a virtuoso abstract pictorial language. It was during this time that Paalen painted the 1953 La maison du poète, utilizing the fumage technique he invented and used throughout his artistic career. The title of this painting may refer to the historic “House of the Poet” located in another picturesque medieval town, Locronan (Brittany), within traveling distance from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The surface of the canvas contains light-colored, irregularly blocky shapes that suggest the distinctive rough medieval stonework of these remote regions while the calligraphic black lines lyrically arranged throughout bring to mind writing on a page. The smoky dots and smudges of the fumage convey a sense of the passage of time, the mystery of the archaic and even the random nature of memory itself. This canvas was part of an important last exhibition of Paalen at the Galerie Hentschel in Paris in 1954. Only five years later in 1959, at the age of 54, Paalen committed suicide in Mexico, sadly bringing to an end an important chapter in the history of Surrealism.
Susan L. Aberth, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
The Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen was involved with the Surrealist movement off and on in Europe, Mexico and the United States. His first serious participation with the group came in 1938 when he became involved with the design for the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Paris. There, with Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Man Ray he helped to create one of the first art “environments” or what are known today as “installations.” The mannequin Paalen decorated resembled a totemic entity covered with vines and mushrooms that evoked the mysterious forces of nature, themes his work would take up later with greater intensity. Struggling under the burden of traumatic loss in childhood, Paalen sought to contact and make visible otherworldly dimensions utilizing a variety of techniques related to Surrealism’s use of psychic automatism. One of his greatest innovations was the development and use of what he termed “fumage” or “smoke” paintings that were created by passing paper or canvas over a candle flame that left flickering smoky traces. Paalen would then build upon these random markings, adding colors and brushstrokes to create ephemeral whirlwinds that resemble mediumistic channelings of telluric forces.
With his wife, the poet and later painter Alice Rahon, Paalen moved to Mexico in 1939, accompanied by their friend and benefactor, the Swiss photographer Eva Sulzer. With the help of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, they settled nearby in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City. In 1940, with the assistance of the Peruvian poet César Moro and his friend André Breton (who remained in Paris) he opened the now legendary International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galería de Arte Mexicano founded by Inés Amor. While in Mexico he housed artist visitors such as Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Robert Motherwell as well as Remedios Varo and her partner Benjamin Péret, both of whom would later settle in Mexico. In spring of 1942 Paalen launched an art journal titled DYN that published five issues between 1942 and 1944. He used this journal to express his interests in a variety of subjects such as quantum theory, totemism, and cave painting, in addition to more political topics including dialectical materialism. Extremely influential, especially to the developing generation of Abstract Expressionist artists in New York, DYN established Paalen’s reputation as an innovative thinker and theorist.
In 1952 Paalen returned to Paris, perhaps to reconcile with the Surrealists with whom he had broken off contact after his scandalous essay “Farewell to Surrealism” published in the first issue of DYN. Renting Kurt Seligman’s Villa Seurat in Paris, Paalen renewed his relationship with Breton, spending his summers with him at his house in the charming medieval town of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, before returning to Mexico in 1954. During his stay in France he painted a number of masterful canvases that display a virtuoso abstract pictorial language. It was during this time that Paalen painted the 1953 La maison du poète, utilizing the fumage technique he invented and used throughout his artistic career. The title of this painting may refer to the historic “House of the Poet” located in another picturesque medieval town, Locronan (Brittany), within traveling distance from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The surface of the canvas contains light-colored, irregularly blocky shapes that suggest the distinctive rough medieval stonework of these remote regions while the calligraphic black lines lyrically arranged throughout bring to mind writing on a page. The smoky dots and smudges of the fumage convey a sense of the passage of time, the mystery of the archaic and even the random nature of memory itself. This canvas was part of an important last exhibition of Paalen at the Galerie Hentschel in Paris in 1954. Only five years later in 1959, at the age of 54, Paalen committed suicide in Mexico, sadly bringing to an end an important chapter in the history of Surrealism.
Susan L. Aberth, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York