André MassonAndré Masson - Original Lithograph1963
1963
About the Item
- Creator:André Masson (1896-1987, French)
- Creation Year:1963
- Dimensions:Height: 12.6 in (32 cm)Width: 9.85 in (25 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU16122318681
André Masson
Born in 1896 in Balagny-sur- Thérain, a small village in France, André Masson spent most of his youth in Brussels, Belgium working as a pattern maker at an embroidery atelier. Masson began his schooling in 1907 at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1912, he relocated to Paris, where he attended the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1914, the artist was called to military duty for the First World War, where he was severely wounded and sent back to Paris. Much of Masson’s work is influenced by this trauma; his drawings and paintings executed during the 1920s represent battle scenes, blood, death, birds and fish. The strange realities of trench warfare and the immediate contiguity of life and death are drawn upon, and his imagery suggests a confrontation of life at an abnormal level of experience. His signature style deals with violence, evident in terrifying, fragmented figures, which reflect the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and WWII, as well as his troubled psyche in the aftermath of his service in WWI.
After WWI, Masson moved to the South of France, where he met Juan Gris, André Derain, Joan Miró and André Breton. Breton championed the Surrealist Manifesto and Masson joined in the group exhibition of the first Surrealists. An iconoclast, whose abrupt stylistic transitions defy classification, Masson also explored automatism (automatic drawing), a process that sought to express the creative force of the unconscious. These automatic drawings had no preconceived subject or composition. Like a medium channeling a spirit, Masson let his pen travel rapidly across the paper without conscious control. He soon found hints of images, fragmented bodies and objects, emerging from the abstract, lacelike web of pen marks. At times, Masson elaborated on these with conscious changes or additions, but he left the traces of the rapidly drawn ink mostly intact. Masson’s oeuvre explores several techniques of painting, drawing and sculpture and displays rich, colorful abstraction as well as monochrome imagery and automatic linear representations. An early Surrealist and student of Cubism, Masson went on to inspire the New York Abstract Expressionists. Masson developed a technique of automatic painting that retained the element of chance; he dripped glue onto paper to form drawings and then covered it with sand. These ‘sand paintings’ are unquestionably his most iconic style.
When Masson emigrated to the U.S. in 1939, he strongly influenced several American painters with this technique, the most evident example being Jackson Pollack. After his time in America, he returned to Europe and while living in Spain during the mid-1930s, he became enraptured with Spanish themes—bullfights, matadors and Spanish mythology. Masson finally settled down in France (Aix-en-Provence), where he took up a late interest in impressionistic landscape, but he ultimately came to a place where he painted nearly exclusively abstract images. Masson dedicated his life as an artist to encouraging the non-rational purpose in art, to the direct transference of subconscious thought and to the primal forces of conflicts that he experienced in the trenches of World War One. Masson sought to convey in his work a deeper reality of man’s behavior, his own complex personal imagery, and his belief that painting is not a matter of developing style but a part of life itself.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, Switzerland
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
- Henri Michaux - Beach - Original LithographBy Henri MichauxLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHHenri Michaux - Beach - Original Lithograph 1956 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. From the art review XXème siècle Unsigned and unumbered as issuedCategory
1950s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Henri Michaux - Original ZinchographBy Henri MichauxLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHHenri Michaux - Original Zinchograph 1958 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. Henri Michaux (1899 - 1984) The French writer, painter and graphic artist Henri Michau...Category
1990s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Zao Wou-ki - Original Lithograph from XXe Siecle magazineBy Zao Wou-KiLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHZao Wou-ki - Original Lithograph from XXe Siecle magazine 1958 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. Zao Wou Ki (1921 - 2013) At the tender age of fourteen Zao Wou-Ki...Category
1950s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Zao Wou-ki - Original Lithograph - Abstract CompositionBy Zao Wou-KiLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHZao Wou-ki - Lithograph 1971 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. From the art review XXe siècle Unsigned and unnumbered as issuedCategory
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Giuseppe Capogrossi - StencilBy Guiseppe CapogrossiLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHGiuseppe Capogrossi - Stencil 1958 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. Giuseppe Capogrossi B. 1900, ROME; D. 1972, ROME Giuseppe C...Category
1950s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Jean-Michel Atlan - Kafka - Original LithographLocated in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CHOriginal lithograph by Jean-Michel Atlan For Description of a Struggle by Franz Kafka Paris, Maeght Publisher, 1946. Dimensions: 30.5 x 24.5 Edition: 300 on vellum Mourlot JEAN-MI...Category
1940s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Lament for LorcaBy Robert MotherwellLocated in London, GBLithograph on white Tyler Graphics Ltd. (TGL) handmade paper 44x61 in (111.8x154.9cm) Edition of 52Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsColor, Lithograph
- Black with No Way OutBy Robert MotherwellLocated in London, GB15 x 38 ins (38.1 x 96.5 cms) Edition of 98 Signature:Signed "Motherwell" in pencil lower right Inscriptions:Numbered in pencil lower right; workshop chop mark lower right; work...Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsColor, Lithograph
- Mediterranean LightBy Robert MotherwellLocated in London, GBLithograph on white Tyler Graphics Ltd. (TGL) handmade paper 32 1/2 x 76 in. (82.6 x 193 cm) Edition of 40Category
1990s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsColor, Lithograph
- BastosBy Robert MotherwellLocated in London, GBEdition of 49 plus 12 artist's proofs 158.4 x 101.6 cms (62.4 x 40 ins) Published by Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New YorkCategory
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- UntitledBy Sam FrancisLocated in London, GB97.5 x 71.1 cms (38 3/8 x 28 ins) Edition of 50 Paper: Arches Cover Signed lower left; numbered lower right, publisher's chop lower left.\Publisher: The Litho Shop, Inc., Santa Monica, California. Printed by George Page...Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsColor, Lithograph
- SamuraiBy Robert MotherwellLocated in London, GBSignature: Signed "R. Motherwell" in pencil lower right Inscriptions: Numbered in pencil lower right; workshop chop mark lower right Edition: 16Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph