André Masson

ANDRÉ MASSON ( Balagny-sur-Thérain,
France, 1896- Paris, 1987).
"Tree in bloom".
Pastel on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Provenance: Gallery Patrice Trigano, Paris; Private collection.
Measurements: 62 x 48 cm; 101 x 87,5 cm (frame).

In "Tree in flower", André Masson appeals to a vehement and lyrical gesturality that subverts the naturalistic representation in favor of a more interior and symbolic vision of the vegetal world. The tree is not constructed here from a botanical logic, but reveals itself as a living ideogram: its branches, intertwined with an almost calligraphic urgency, evoke dreamlike hieroglyphs, signs of a lost language. This network of lines is drawn with the speed of one who obeys psychic automatism.

The blues surrounding the branches create a vibrant atmosphere, as if the tree emanates an invisible energy, a poetic halo that detaches it from the earthly. The ground is worked by means of a subtle contrast between small stripes that suggest weeds and small squares that could allude to mineral fragments. This alternation of signs produces a rhythmic tension that adds to the general dynamism of the composition.

Masson, faithful to his surrealist affiliation, does not give us a "tree" as a fixed and recognizable object, but an emanation of his spirit: a metamorphic symbol, a being in transit between matter and vision, between the vegetal and the graphic, between the real and the imaginary.

André Masson was a French artist who worked in Surrealist painting and Abstract Expressionism, with a clear preference for collage (in which he used innovative materials at the time, such as sand and gum arabic, for example). He trained at the School of Fine Arts in Brussels, and later settled in Paris; he then lived in Spain for a time, moving later to Martinique and then to New York, returning to France in 1945. His work has been seen everywhere he has lived, as well as at the Venice Biennale in 1954 (Grand Prize for Painting), for example. His work is held in numerous private collections and institutions such as the MoMA in New York, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Tate, the Cleveland Museum of Art, etc.