History of Art: Yves Tanguy

Art of the 20th Century

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map

Yves Tanguy

Yves Tanguy

(b Paris, 5 Jan 1900; d Woodbury, CT, 15 Jan 1955).
French painter. Recognized by the late 1930s as a representative of the purest strain of SURREALISM in painting, he was the only one of the great painters of that movement to be entirely self-taught. Although he was a fellow pupil at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris of Pierre Matisse, who later became his dealer, he came to painting comparatively late in life, after spending two years with the Merchant Navy. While doing his military service at Lunéville he was deeply affected by his meeting with Jacques Prévert (1900–77), the French poet later associated with Surrealism, who was also a stranger to the joys of life in the barracks. After a long period spent with the African Chasseurs in the south of Tunisia, Tanguy returned to Paris in 1922 and renewed contact with Prévert, also meeting the French writer Marcel Duhamel (1900–66), who provided accommodation for them at 54 Rue du Château. This address later became an important meeting-place for the Surrealists; it was there, for example, that the Surrealist game of the ‘exquisite corpse’ was invented.