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Lot Essay
By the end of the 1930s, Wolfgang Paalen was a thoroughly integrated and celebrated member of the Paris Surrealist group. These were thrilling years to be associated with the movement, just as Surrealism was gaining international acclaim and a global audience, and Paalen saw his own star rise along with those of his fellow artists. Indeed, the press was full of praise for Paalen’s art when they saw it exhibited at the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris. Writing in Minotaur in 1939, the seminal Surrealist publication, English critic Herbert Read said, ‘The paintings of Wolfgang Paalen are primordial: the senses break through the wall which divides the new-born vision from reality… Every great artist invents a new world: but these new worlds reveal the pristine experiences of the human race’ (H. Read, ‘Wolfgang Paalen’, in Minotaure, no. 12/13, May 1939, p. 90).
Three years earlier, in 1936, the then-twenty-year-old Paalen met André Breton, one of the founders of Surrealism. Breton was immediately taken with Paalen’s work, welcoming him into the group of artist and intellectuals and involving him in the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition. It was there that Paalen debuted his fumage, a technique he had developed for which smoke from a kerosene lamp or candle was used to create marks on canvas or paper. The delicate, hazy effects were mercurial and unrestrained, creating something like an afterglow or a mirage. As the writer Gustav Regler noted, fumage ‘bathes a canvas in the light of an untraceable midnight sun’ (G. Regler, quoted in A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, p. 272). Fumage was quickly adopted by other Surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí, who saw it as a true attempt to transpose the automatic writing experience into painting and drawing.
Paalen spent 1938, the year before he moved to Mexico, entirely devoted to fumage. His output continued to be abundant, culminating in a contemporaneous solo presentation at Galerie Renou et Colle in Paris in which Taches solaires was shown. A catalogue was produced in conjunction with the exhibition, one of which was sent to Breton who had written the preface. Upon obtaining his copy, he wrote to Paalen saying, ‘I received your catalogue last night that has clearly become fabulous… In truth, I am ravished by this booklet (more than by many other things I have published): the Fumage on the cover with glassine paper enchants me, the inner illustrations are perfect’ (A. Breton in a letter to W. Paalen, July 1938, reprinted in A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, pp. 311 & 313).
Characteristic of the artist, Taches solaires is rife with the otherworldly and magical figures that Paalen had seen in the hallucinatory episodes he experienced as a child. Orbital forms and monstrous faces blossom in front of a hazy horizon; this is one of the few works of the period in which ‘fleeting poetic glimpses of images’ can be found (A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, p. 304). After its completion, Taches solaires was acquired by Gordon Onslow Ford, the Surrealist artist who Paalen had become close with in Mexico though they had, in fact, first crossed paths in Paris. In 1947, Onslow Ford moved to San Francisco and Paalen followed a year later. Hoping to remake the world in the aftermath of the Second World War they, along with Roberto Matta and Sybil Moholy-Nagy, founded the Dynaton artist group which, like the Surrealists before them, sought to incorporate the power of the unconscious mind into their canvases.
Three years earlier, in 1936, the then-twenty-year-old Paalen met André Breton, one of the founders of Surrealism. Breton was immediately taken with Paalen’s work, welcoming him into the group of artist and intellectuals and involving him in the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition. It was there that Paalen debuted his fumage, a technique he had developed for which smoke from a kerosene lamp or candle was used to create marks on canvas or paper. The delicate, hazy effects were mercurial and unrestrained, creating something like an afterglow or a mirage. As the writer Gustav Regler noted, fumage ‘bathes a canvas in the light of an untraceable midnight sun’ (G. Regler, quoted in A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, p. 272). Fumage was quickly adopted by other Surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí, who saw it as a true attempt to transpose the automatic writing experience into painting and drawing.
Paalen spent 1938, the year before he moved to Mexico, entirely devoted to fumage. His output continued to be abundant, culminating in a contemporaneous solo presentation at Galerie Renou et Colle in Paris in which Taches solaires was shown. A catalogue was produced in conjunction with the exhibition, one of which was sent to Breton who had written the preface. Upon obtaining his copy, he wrote to Paalen saying, ‘I received your catalogue last night that has clearly become fabulous… In truth, I am ravished by this booklet (more than by many other things I have published): the Fumage on the cover with glassine paper enchants me, the inner illustrations are perfect’ (A. Breton in a letter to W. Paalen, July 1938, reprinted in A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, pp. 311 & 313).
Characteristic of the artist, Taches solaires is rife with the otherworldly and magical figures that Paalen had seen in the hallucinatory episodes he experienced as a child. Orbital forms and monstrous faces blossom in front of a hazy horizon; this is one of the few works of the period in which ‘fleeting poetic glimpses of images’ can be found (A. Neufert, Paalen: Life and Work, Berlin, 2022, p. 304). After its completion, Taches solaires was acquired by Gordon Onslow Ford, the Surrealist artist who Paalen had become close with in Mexico though they had, in fact, first crossed paths in Paris. In 1947, Onslow Ford moved to San Francisco and Paalen followed a year later. Hoping to remake the world in the aftermath of the Second World War they, along with Roberto Matta and Sybil Moholy-Nagy, founded the Dynaton artist group which, like the Surrealists before them, sought to incorporate the power of the unconscious mind into their canvases.