Dorothea Tanning

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Dorothea Tanning (born August 25, 1910 in Galesburg , Illinois , † January 31, 2012 in New York City ) was an American painter , sculptor and writer. She also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theater. Tanning was married to the German artist Max Ernst from 1946 and, like him, created surrealist paintings. She lived in New York City after Max Ernst's death in 1976.

life and work

The self-taught artist settled in New York in 1935 after studying in Galesburg and Chicago. In 1936 she received her formative inspiration from the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism , which was organized by Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art , New York. There she saw Dadaist and Surrealist works for the first time . In a joint exhibition that exclusively showed female painters , she was represented in January 1943 with her self-portrait Birthday (1942) in the “Exhibition by 31 Women” in the Art of This Century gallery by Peggy Guggenheim , which also featured works by Frida Kahlo and Louise Nevelson , Meret Oppenheim and others showed. The encounter with Guggenheim's husband Max Ernst led to the estrangement of the Ernst couple; In 1946 Max Ernst married Dorothea Tanning for the fourth time. They celebrated a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in Beverly Hills .

Sedona landscape. The Ernst couple had a similar view from their house.

Tanning was a participant in the Bel Ami competition in 1946, in which she - alongside other surrealist greats such as Salvador Dalí - submitted the painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony , with which she could express her own style of erotic metaphors. The winner of the competition was Max Ernst. With the prize money, the couple bought a piece of land in the mountains of Sedona , Arizona and built a house. Ernst's monumental sculpture Capricorn was created there in 1948 . In 1953 the couple left Sedona and moved to France. After a stay in Paris, they moved to Huismes in 1955 , and from 1963 to 1975 they lived in Seillans . That year they returned to Paris, where Max Ernst died on April 1, 1976.

Max Ernst created a declaration of love for every birthday of his wife: The 36 “D-Paintings” for birthdays, weddings and silver weddings have been part of the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl since 2005 . The letter "D" is included in every work. After spending many years in France, Tanning returned to New York in 1978 after the death of Max Ernst. She has published poetry in The New Yorker and authored several books.

Tanning created sets and costumes for ballet performances, the first being George Balanchine's Night Shadow (now La Sonnambula ), performed in 1946 by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the old Metropolitan Opera House. It was followed by The Witch (1950; John Cranko ), Bayou (1952; Balanchine) and Will o 'the Wis (1953; Ruthanna Boris). In 1961 she designed the costumes for Jean Giraudoux 's play Judith ; the stage design came from Max Ernst.

After Tanning's first solo exhibition in 1944 at the Julien Levy Gallery , New York, a solo exhibition in Europe followed in 1954 at the Furstenburg Gallery in Paris after the Second World War . In 1955 a change of style took place, which is described as "prismatic". A major work of this period is Insomnias from 1957. In 1959 she participated in the documenta II in Kassel . A retrospective of her works took place in 1974 at the Center National d'Art Contemporain (from 1977 Center Pompidou ), organized by Pontus Hultén . In 2004 she became an honorary member of the Max Ernst Society . On Tanning's 100th birthday, the Max Ernst Museum (Maison Waldberg) in Seillans honored her work with the exhibition Happy Birthday Dorothea Tanning until the end of October 2010 .

Dorothea Tanning died at the age of 101. Her second volume of poetry, Coming to That , was published in autumn 2011.

Works (selection)

Publications

  • Abyss . Standard Editions, New York 1977
  • Birthday. Memoirs. Lapis Press, 1986
    • Birthday. Life memories . From the American by Barbara Bortfeldt. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1990 ISBN 3-462-02041-2
  • Between Lives - An Artist and Her World . Autobiography. WW Norton, 2001 books.google.de
  • A table of content. Poetry. Graywolf Press, New York 2004
  • Coming to That: Poems . Graywolf Press, New York 2011
  • Dorothea Tanning . Texts by Jean Christophe Bailly, trans. Richard Howard, Robert C. Morgan. George Braziller, New York 1995

Secondary literature

Movie

  • In 1978 Peter Schamoni published the 15-minute short film Dorothea Tanning - Insomnia .
  • The documentary film Birthday - The American painter Dorothea Tanning by Horst Mühlenbeck was shown in cinemas in 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mary V. Dearborn: I have no regrets! , P. 293 ff
  2. ↑ The couple in front of the house in Sedona , photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson
  3. ^ Lothar Fischer: Max Ernst . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1969, pp. 112, 162
  4. ↑ Every picture a kiss . In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger , September 3, 2005
  5. ↑ Fantastical Images of Dance . In: The Wall Street Journal , May 17, 2010
  6. ↑ Quoted from website Dorothea Tanning
  7. ↑ Quoted from Tanning's website
  8. ^ Exhibition Happy Birthday Dorothea Tanning 2010 nwz.online.de
  9. ↑ Quoted from website Dorothea Tanning
  10. ↑ Dorothea Tanning - Insomnia in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  11. ↑ Birthday - The American painter Dorothea Tanning in the Internet Movie Database (English)
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personal data
SURNAME Tanning, Dorothea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Galesburg , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2012
Place of death New York City