.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
Masson pioneered the use of automatic drawing, which he first practiced in late 1923. André Breton was quick to appreciate this novel and adventurous aspect of Masson's work when they first met in Masson's studio in early 1924. Breton advocated the automatic technique as the principal means of a new artistic expression when he published his Manifeste du Surréalism in October of that year. The challenge that Masson now faced in his painting was to successfully adapt the freewheeling line of his automatic drawing with the formal vocabulary and spatial conception that he had derived from Cubism.
Masson achieved the desired breakthrough in 1926 with his sand paintings, such as Combat de poissons. To make these, he placed the canvas on the floor, and created a ground consisting of spontaneously generated forms of sand sifted onto wet poured glue, over which he drew with loops and squiggles of paint squeezed straight from the tube, without the use of a brush. In this process he obliterated the vestiges of cubist scaffolding, and was now free to treat the canvas as flat space, open to the rapid application of his visionary and freely drawn imagery.
By the late 1920s, Masson was growing apart from the Surrealist movement surrounding Breton, which he had joined as a charter member. He was spending increasing time away from Paris, mainly in the Midi. In 1928 he wrote to his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that he did not consider himself to be part of any group, and told Christian Zervos that he could publish an article about his work only if he did not mention the term "Surrealism" in it. At a meeting called by Breton in early 1929 to discuss member responses to a letter on group action, Masson denounced Breton's authoritarian ways and demanded his own right to personal, independent activity. Breton responded in his second Surrealist manifesto in 1929 by castigating Masson and formally expelling him from the movement.
In the same year Masson's marriage ended in divorce. Commentators have made a connection between these belligerent confrontations and quarrels, and the increasing violence in Masson's imagery, which frequently depicted murders, massacres, battles and devourings. The present painting shows a fishwife in her market stall, a scene Masson would have witnessed in Paris or in any of the Mediterranean port towns near his new home in Roussillon, north of Marseille. Its subject is related to Combat de poissons, and a subsequent, more apocalyptic version, the Grande combat de poissons, 1929, now lost. The figure of the fishwife is virtually indistinguishable from the slithering tumult of the catch around her. The balance scale she uses to weigh her wares is visible at upper center; its tilted cruciform shape is the element that imparts some measure of equilibrium into the swirling composition. Furthering this Christian reference, the fishes are a traditional Christian symbol as they recall still more ancient notions of ritual and sacrifice.
Masson pioneered the use of automatic drawing, which he first practiced in late 1923. André Breton was quick to appreciate this novel and adventurous aspect of Masson's work when they first met in Masson's studio in early 1924. Breton advocated the automatic technique as the principal means of a new artistic expression when he published his Manifeste du Surréalism in October of that year. The challenge that Masson now faced in his painting was to successfully adapt the freewheeling line of his automatic drawing with the formal vocabulary and spatial conception that he had derived from Cubism.
Masson achieved the desired breakthrough in 1926 with his sand paintings, such as Combat de poissons. To make these, he placed the canvas on the floor, and created a ground consisting of spontaneously generated forms of sand sifted onto wet poured glue, over which he drew with loops and squiggles of paint squeezed straight from the tube, without the use of a brush. In this process he obliterated the vestiges of cubist scaffolding, and was now free to treat the canvas as flat space, open to the rapid application of his visionary and freely drawn imagery.
By the late 1920s, Masson was growing apart from the Surrealist movement surrounding Breton, which he had joined as a charter member. He was spending increasing time away from Paris, mainly in the Midi. In 1928 he wrote to his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that he did not consider himself to be part of any group, and told Christian Zervos that he could publish an article about his work only if he did not mention the term "Surrealism" in it. At a meeting called by Breton in early 1929 to discuss member responses to a letter on group action, Masson denounced Breton's authoritarian ways and demanded his own right to personal, independent activity. Breton responded in his second Surrealist manifesto in 1929 by castigating Masson and formally expelling him from the movement.
In the same year Masson's marriage ended in divorce. Commentators have made a connection between these belligerent confrontations and quarrels, and the increasing violence in Masson's imagery, which frequently depicted murders, massacres, battles and devourings. The present painting shows a fishwife in her market stall, a scene Masson would have witnessed in Paris or in any of the Mediterranean port towns near his new home in Roussillon, north of Marseille. Its subject is related to Combat de poissons, and a subsequent, more apocalyptic version, the Grande combat de poissons, 1929, now lost. The figure of the fishwife is virtually indistinguishable from the slithering tumult of the catch around her. The balance scale she uses to weigh her wares is visible at upper center; its tilted cruciform shape is the element that imparts some measure of equilibrium into the swirling composition. Furthering this Christian reference, the fishes are a traditional Christian symbol as they recall still more ancient notions of ritual and sacrifice.