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Lot Essay
This work is recorded in Stephen Robeson Miller’s Illustrated Catalogue Raisonné of the Surrealist Art of Kay Sage located at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.
Kay Sage's Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool testifies to the importance of women artists within the Surrealist movement. Sage arrived in Paris in 1937, having sold her jewelry in order to rent an apartment on the Ile St. Louis. One year later she exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendants, where the unsettling tension of her works attracted André Breton's attention. He was startled to find out that those sharp and methodically constructed paintings were the work of a woman. In 1938, through her friend and German sculptor Heinz Henghes (1906-1975), Sage met Yves Tanguy, whom she married in 1940.
Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool was painted in 1947, a pivotal year in Sage's career. That year she began exploring the enigmatic, scaffolding structures that would characterize her paintings from that moment onwards. When compared with later works such as Hyphen –now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York– Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool appears as an important, decisive step towards the artist's mature style. The architectural style of the painting, evocative of subconscious landscapes cherished by the Surrealists, is central to Sage's art.
Whitney Chadwick argued that Sage's distinctive rejection of biomorphic forms set her apart from all the other Surrealists working in abstract style and from Tanguy in particular (Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, New York, 1985, p. 166). This allowed her to explore not only intriguing and haunting spaces, but also subtle juxtapositions of tones. Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool remarkably orchestrates shades of silver greys, luminous muddy blues and deep blacks.
[A] Kay Sage, Hyphen, 1954. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Kay Sage's Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool testifies to the importance of women artists within the Surrealist movement. Sage arrived in Paris in 1937, having sold her jewelry in order to rent an apartment on the Ile St. Louis. One year later she exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendants, where the unsettling tension of her works attracted André Breton's attention. He was startled to find out that those sharp and methodically constructed paintings were the work of a woman. In 1938, through her friend and German sculptor Heinz Henghes (1906-1975), Sage met Yves Tanguy, whom she married in 1940.
Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool was painted in 1947, a pivotal year in Sage's career. That year she began exploring the enigmatic, scaffolding structures that would characterize her paintings from that moment onwards. When compared with later works such as Hyphen –now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York– Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool appears as an important, decisive step towards the artist's mature style. The architectural style of the painting, evocative of subconscious landscapes cherished by the Surrealists, is central to Sage's art.
Whitney Chadwick argued that Sage's distinctive rejection of biomorphic forms set her apart from all the other Surrealists working in abstract style and from Tanguy in particular (Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, New York, 1985, p. 166). This allowed her to explore not only intriguing and haunting spaces, but also subtle juxtapositions of tones. Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool remarkably orchestrates shades of silver greys, luminous muddy blues and deep blacks.
[A] Kay Sage, Hyphen, 1954. Museum of Modern Art, New York.