Yves Tanguy – *Dame à l’'’absence* (Lady of Absence), 1942

by Atelier Liesjes

'Dame à l'absence' — 'Dame van de afwezigheid' — een poëtische, surrealistische titel die op het eerste gezicht een vrouw aanduidt maar bij nader inzien de afwezigheid zelf personifieert. Het werk dateert uit 1942, Tanguys eerste jaren in Amerika, toen Europa in oorlog was. De 'dame' is misschien niet aanwezig in het beeld zelf — alleen haar 'afwezigheid' is visible, in the empty space, the silent forms, the atmospheric stillness. Tanguy’s biomorphic forms may here be feminine in character: curves, soft surfaces, mysterious hollows. Absence as presence — someone or something that is not there but nevertheless dominates the image — is a typically surrealist paradox. Yves Tanguy (1900–1955) was a Franco-American Surrealist painter, born in Paris. Self-taught and without any formal art training, he was inspired in 1923 by a painting by Giorgio de Chirico that 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.