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Charles Green Shaw
American Surrealist pipes and playing cards spirit of Magritte abstract Montage

ca 1940

About the Item

I love this extraordinary American surrealist piece - a collage/montage, an assembly of objects in a velvet-clad box/frame - for a number of reasons reasons. I love the fact that it depicts pipes, among the most iconic images of the surrealist movement, rooted in Magritte’s famous 1929 painting which depicts a pipe accompanied by the caption “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe). Marcel Duchamp loved using pipes in his art, too. Our montage - created by an American who worked in France - really feels part of an era, a current, a vibe. At the same time, the work feels extremely personal. It is a precious collection of old and faded things, a mysterious box-with-the-box, 18th century playing cards, locked in time. It presages Daniel Spoerri in the way it captures a moment. As with Spoerri's work, the montage makes us aware of the imprint of time: the vintage frame is now battered, the velvet faded. If, like me, you remember marvelling at your grandfather's special objects as a kid, this one will strike a cord. Charles Green Shaw was of course a key figure in the development of early American abstraction. Shaw travelled to Europe in the early '30s and met surrealist and abstract artists such as Joan Miro, Le Corbusier, George Braque, and Man Ray. He was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists Association which was founded in 1936 and known as a member of the Park Avenue Cubists based in Manhattan, New York. Shaw holds the special recognition of being the only American born artist to be awarded two solo exhibitions during his lifetime at Solomon Guggenheim's Museum of Non-Objective Painting (MNOP). The work by shaw presented here, signed on the verso of the montage, was acquired in France and dates, I believe, from the time when he worked there. From the same provenance, I acquired a second work by the artist dedicated to Bibi Dudensing, at whose villa Charles Green Shaw staying in the seaside resort of Le Touquet, France. Hence, this montage is likely also to have originally belonged to Bibi Dudensing, his art dealer's wife. Bibi was painted by Picasso and Pascin, drawn by Henri Matisse and Tsuguharu Foujita, and photographed by Man Ray and Carl Van Vechten.
  • Creator:
    Charles Green Shaw (1892 - 1974, American)
  • Creation Year:
    ca 1940
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 13.78 in (35 cm)Width: 17.72 in (45 cm)Depth: 0.79 in (2 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Wear and repair to vintage frame, fading to velvet and playing cards, fine particles on the inside of the glass.
  • Gallery Location:
    Norwich, GB
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU991313131722
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