(Balagny/Oise 1896–1987 Paris)
Formes de la Fécondité I, 1955, signed, dated and titled on the reverse, oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, framed

This work is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity released by M. Rheims and R. Laurin in 1969 and a photo certificate released by M. Jardot, Galerie L. Leiris under no. 07178/50620 in 1981

Provenance:
Collection of the artist
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Galerie Semiha Huber, Zurich
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1969

Exhibited:
Venice XXIX Venice Biennial, 1958

Characteristic of André Masson’s work are the many techniques he employed. Those spanned the spectrum from full, rich polychrome to monochrome and purely linear work. Some of his works involved narrowly defined biomorphic images, always marked by unique speed of execution and a vast personal imaginarium.
Born at the end of the nineteenth century, French painter André Masson served on the fighting lines of World War I only a few years after he had joined the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and was profoundly affected by the experience of war, which spurred in interest in the deeper reality of man’s behaviour and in exploring the abyss of the sub-conscious that drew him to Surrealism. Having met André Breton in 1924, he exhibited with the Surrealists for a few years. His style had also inherited the Cubist tradition, especially as regards the composition of his paintings. He was interested in the non-rational ends of art – the transfer of thought directly into drawing and painting. Masson and Mirò did so-called automatic drawings, allowing the movement of the pencil unencumbered by thought.
Masson’s universe abounds in violent passions – a world in constant motion where humans experience thirst, hunger, love, death. Masson does not care to withhold, allowing the elements in his works to freely breath and multiply themselves:
“la certitude d’être libre de tout lieu, d’avoir le droit de ce contradire, de vagabonder” (A. Masson)
Masson did not want to belong to a pre-defined artistic style, he wanted painting to be part of life itself, a way of knowing coterminous with the way of action: be that action violent, erotic, chaotic. At the beginning of World War II, he moved with his family to the United States where he was influenced by the work of American artists like Gorky, Pollock, Rothko and, in turn, deeply influenced their work. As Clement Greenberg has stated, the presence of Masson in the United States during the war was of invaluable benefit to all American artists: Masson more than anyone anticipated the new abstract painting and he has never been given enough credit for that.
Formes de la Fecondité I, was created in 1955. It bears traces of automatic drawing, including erotic and chaotic elements within an abstract composition that, through the use of colour and transparency, leaves the viewer with a sense of peacefulness. At the same time, the automatic drawings inescapably reflect the painter’s complex state of mind, informed not least by the ideas of psychoanalysis.
It is known that the important French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan was Masson’s brother in law, as Lacan’s second wife Sylvia Macklés, who had been previously married to George Bataille from whom she divorced, was the sister of Rose Macklés, wife of Masson. In the same year of execution of Formes de la Fecondité I, Jacques Lacan had purchased at an auction the famous painting by Courbet L’Origine du Monde. Lacan asked Masson to paint a sliding wooden door to cover the Origine du Monde as displaying such a picture in one’s household was inappropriate, and the painting was considered scandalous at the time. Masson’s door featured a simplified carving of the painting in his characteristic and unique style.

In Formes de la Feconditè I once again Masson’s energy pops out like an explosion. In his work Masson’s aim is not to seduce, to dream or to comprehend, through his art he wants to demonstrate that within the human body there is an explosive energy capable of creating universes, life, light and darkness. These creative elements are all clearly depicted in Formes de la Fecondité I, a painting that only a few years later was exhibited at the IXXX Venice Biennal in a room dedicated to Masson’s oeuvre only.