Au Coeur de la Paresse

1946

Surrealism, a visual and literary movement founded in 1924, originated as a European response to the First World War. Yves Tanguy painted Surrealist landscapes devoid of human figures throughout his career.

Composition and Robe du Matin—created during Tanguy’s self-imposed exile in the United States in the wake of World War II—speak to the irrationality of war and the annihilation of Europe’s people. Using Surrealist free association and unexpected juxtapositions, Tanguy frames vast voids with interlocking forms that resemble body parts and spindly rods. His dreamlike deviations from the natural world reflect Surrealism’s interest in Freudian psychology and the subconscious, and perhaps the postwar landscape of 1946 Europe.