Yves Tanguy

A self-taught painter in Paris

Yves Tanguy was born in Paris in 1900 and spent part of his childhood in Brittany. After merchant-marine voyages and military service, he returned to Paris without formal art training. Seeing a painting by Giorgio de Chirico helped persuade him to become a painter.

Meeting André Breton

Tanguy met André Breton in Paris in 1925 and joined the Surrealist group. He participated in its exhibitions and collective activities while developing one of its most recognizable pictorial worlds.

His paintings place smooth stones, bones, organs, machines, and nameless objects in deep landscapes with low horizons. The forms appear precise enough to touch, but their scale and function remain uncertain.

From Paris to Connecticut

Tanguy left France for the United States in 1939 with the American painter Kay Sage, whom he married the following year. They settled in Connecticut, where both continued to paint and where displaced European artists gathered during the war.

He became an American citizen in 1948 and died in Connecticut in 1955. The mature landscapes changed in size and density after emigration, but the method and imagery had been formed within the Paris Surrealist circle.