Provenance

Dorothea Tanning

Ernst, Dorothea Tanning

American, 1910 - 2012

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American painter (1910–2012)

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Blades of forest, pine, and sage green intermixed with slivers of cobalt and sky blue, crimson red, and rose pink create a band of abstracted tree-like forms across this horizontal painting. The blues, red, and pink are concentrated on a structure, presumably a tree, at the front center. To our left of center, geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and rectangles create the impression of a beaked bird, with each shape being fractured into bands of emerald green, royal blue, brick red, and butter yellow. Closer examination finds other birds nearly obscured within the dark, accordion-like patterns of the leaves, including a flock of red-eyed, black, razor-like birds to our left and another creature with a bird-like head and humanoid body to our right. Across the top third of the composition, the sky is pale blue to our left and brightens to shell pink and then light yellow around a disk-like form, to our right. A couple geometric, stylized shapes read as clouds near the upper left corner. Next to a tiny, white line drawing of two abstracted, animal-like forms in the lower right corner, the artist signed his name, “max ernst,” in white paint and the date, “1939” in red.
Max Ernst, A Moment of Calm, 1939, oil on canvas, Gift of Dorothea Tanning Ernst, 1982.34.1

A Moment of Calm

Max Ernst · 1939 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1982.34.1

Bibliography

2012

  • Press, Joy. "Dorothea Tanning, 101: Surrealist artist and poet also designed state sets." The Washington Post (8 February 2012): B6.