7 Works by Yves Tanguy You Should Know

The French Surrealist Yves Tanguy never had any formal training, yet he managed to develop a unique and recognizable style that influenced generations of artists. Inspired by Giorgio de Chirico and Hieronymus Bosch, Tanguy came up with his own creative language that both united and separated him from other Surrealists. During his entire artistic career, he remained true to his chosen style, expanding and rebuilding his creative universe. Below are seven important works by Yves Tanguy that you should know.

Yves Tanguy’s ambition to become an artist developed during his twenties when he was already working as a cargo boat officer. His exposure to art prior to that decision was rather chaotic yet remarkable. Allegedly, he was born in the bed that belonged to Gustave Courbet. In his teenage years, he befriended the son of Henri Matisse and visited his father’s studio, observing his Fauvist canvases. In a village in Brittany, where the Tanguy family spent their summers, young Yves met a local primitivist painter. The man painted on the streets, completely unfazed by the attention of passersby and children’s pranks. Tanguy would later adopt this serene concentration in his own artistic practice, maintaining focus on one thing only.

In 1923, a 23-year-old Tanguy noticed an art gallery from a moving bus. Agitated, he exited on the next stop and ran to see something that would change his life. On display was a work by Giorgio de Chirico. It was most likely the famous 1914 painting The Child’s Brain. Soon, Tanguy started to draw and paint. His works from the first few years of his artistic career, like the Travelling Performers, look amateur and naive, but they also show a hidden potential that was immediately recognized by his creative friends.

2. Mama, Papa is Wounded!

Tanguy claimed that he had no specific concept or idea in mind, but rather saw the entire painting in front of him while working. Here, the influence of Giorgio de Chirico remained strong, with dramatic shadows cast by objects. Some art historians interpret it as a postponed reaction to the trauma of World War I which teenage Tanguy spent alone in Paris. However, Tanguy strictly opposed searching for meanings and motives in his work, unwilling to restrict and categorize his creative potential.

Apart from his deep admiration of Giorgio de Chirico, Tanguy felt greatly inspired by the work and artistic philosophy of Hieronymus Bosch. Although Bosch’s visual language had developed from common medieval symbolism, the artist created his own myth and his narrative based on it. Bosch created Christian art, yet his Christianity seemed widely different from that reflected in the works of other painters of his time. Similarly, Tanguy constructed his visual language based on existing elements and concepts by reinventing and reinterpreting them.

An avid reader throughout his entire life, Tanguy loved to talk about art and literature created by others, but largely avoided discussing his own works. He mostly kept private personal influences that came from his childhood, yet some of them can be decoded in his work. The 1927 painting Death Watching His Family clearly originated from the landscapes of Brittany, where the artist spent his childhood. The fluid figures in the painting clearly indicated the influence of another Surrealist from Tanguy’s circle – the Spanish artist Joan Miro.

Other artists actively borrowed from Tanguy, too. For example, Salvador Dali once boasted about copying Yves’ signature style. Tanguy’s relationship with Dali was quite strained due to the latter’s racist comments and pro-fascist ideas. In 1934, Tanguy signed a public letter written by Andre Breton, announcing the official expulsion of Salvador Dali from the Surrealist movement due to his political and personal opinions.

4. Untitled (Noyer Indifferent)

We are used to talking about Surrealist art being inspired by the developing theories of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and his followers. But in the case of Yves Tanguy, that influence seems mutual. In 1929, Carl Jung, the famous psychologist and theorist, purchased a painting from then-unknown Tanguy. This work had an important influence on Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Unlike the personal unconscious described by Freud, filled with an individual’s repressed desires and fears, the collective one reflected general symbols, archetypes, and shared emotional impulses of humankind.

Jung interpreted Tanguy’s work in one of his 1950s publications concerning the collective subconscious and modern art. The dark cold landscape with biomorphic forms, familiar yet unrecognizable, represented to him the collective pessimistic fantasy of high-tech modernity with its inherent dangers and horrors. Although the work remains in private hands today, it can be seen in the Liechtenstein Museum of Art.

Imaginary Numbers was one of the last works created by Yves Tanguy. In 1939, he settled in the United States with his wife Kay Sage, briefly visiting Europe only once after World War II ended. Tanguy’s later compositions demonstrated the newly achieved order within his imaginary realm. Instead of barren fields with scattered fluid forms, the space became filled with stone structures, rock formations, and ruined towers. However, the feeling of endless emptiness remained the same. Tanguy’s world has transformed through the experiences of his creator, becoming more complex and less mysterious.

Tanguy’s time in the USA was incredibly productive. He exhibited his work alongside his colleagues who also moved to New York and actively socialized with aspiring American artists. He showed his paintings next to those of Jackson and Mark Rothko, yet he never completely adapted to abstract art in general and the Abstract Expressionist movement in particular. Unfortunately, Tanguy’s American success ruined his long friendship with Andre Breton, who accused the artist of becoming too bourgeois and commercial.

6. Fraud in the Garden: The Recently Rediscovered Painting 

In 1930, a Parisian theater called Studio 28 arranged a screening of a Surrealist film called The Golden Age, a bizarre comedy written by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. The movie was explicit and provocative, exploring the hypocrisy of sexual morals and religious values. During the show, two Fascist groups raided the cinema, assaulting the visitors and throwing ink at the screen. On their way out, they slashed several paintings that hung in the theater, including works by Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Man Ray, and Yves Tanguy. While some damage was quickly restored, Tanguy’s work Fraud in The Garden disappeared and was presumed lost or completely destroyed for decades.

In 2022, Fraud in The Garden miraculously reappeared. As explained by the art experts who examined the work, in 1985 an anonymous French collector purchased the work at an auction. The canvas looked completely intact, so the seller was convinced it was a forged piece or a copy of the lost work. Decades later, a series of tests conducted by art conservators have proven that the canvas was indeed the original one, restored with enormous skill and precision. The X-ray analysis also showed the carefully patched slash and restored layers of paint.

The case of Fraud in The Garden was not the first instance of Tanguy’s paintings being involved in weird accidents or sudden recoveries. In 2020, an anonymous businessman flying from Dusseldorf to Tel Aviv accidentally left an undated and untitled work, packed in a cardboard box, at the airport check-in counter. Only after the plane landed in Israel did the man realize his mistake, so he immediately alerted the German authorities.

After a thorough search of the airport departures hall, the painting was nowhere to be found. After contacting the airport cleaning company, the officers searched through the garbage containers. At the bottom of the paper recycling bin, they found the painting worth $340,000. However, it is still unclear why the airport staff threw away the forgotten box without a thorough check of its contents.