Yves Tanguy – Through birds, through fire, but not through glass, 1943 by Atelier Liesjes

One of Tanguy’s most poetic and intriguing works: * 'Through Birds, Through Fire but Not Through Glass'. Vogels doorkruisen de lucht, vuur verteert, maar glas — transparant, hard, breekbaar — vormt een barrière. De tegenstelling is intrigerend: door het meest vluchtige (vogels, vuur) kun je heengaan, maar niet door het meest transparante (glas). Het glas als metafoor voor de onzichtbare grens, de glazen wand tussen werelden. In het schilderij zelf is het Tanguy'*’s familiar landscape of biomorphic forms set in an otherworldly space. The work dates from 1943, a year of intense activity for Tanguy during his exile in the United States. Yves Tanguy (1900–1955) was a French-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.