Yves Tanguy – The Dark Garden, 1928

by Atelier Liesjes

One of Tanguy’s early Surrealist works, dating from 1928 — three years after he joined the Surrealist group. In his early years, Tanguy’s style was still somewhat uncertain, but * 'Le jardin sombre' toont al de kenmerkende elementen die zijn oeuvre zullen definiëren: de uitgestrekte, vlakke ruimte, de vage horizonlijn, de vormen die noch puur organisch noch puur mechanisch zijn. De 'donkere tuin' * depicts a Surrealist, walled-in space: a garden implies an enclosed, cultivated natural environment, but here there is nothing cultivated, nothing familiar. The darkness — both literally and figuratively — is palpable. Yves Tanguy (1900–1955) was a Franco-American Surrealist painter, born in Paris. Self-taught and without formal art training, he was inspired in 1923 by a painting by Giorgio de Chirico which he saw from a moving bus. He joined the Surrealist group led by André Breton and developed a visual language entirely of his own: vast landscapes of an unknown planet, populated by biomorphic forms — soft, flowing objects reminiscent of stone, bone and organic tissue. Tanguy emigrated to the US in 1939, married the Surrealist artist Kay Sage and died in Connecticut. His works are among the most unrecognisable and influential in Surrealism.