Background
Dorothea Tanning was born on August 25, 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois, United States.
painter printmaker sculptor writer
Dorothea Tanning was born on August 25, 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois, United States.
In 1926, Tanning attended Galesburg public schools. Since 1928 to 1930, she studied at Knox College.
Dorothea Tanning moved to Chicago in 1930 and some time later, in 1935, left for New York. There, she supported herself as a commercial artist while pursuing her own painting, and discovered Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1936 exhibition, "Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism".
In 1943, Tanning was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show "Exhibition by 31 Women" at the Art of This Century gallery in New York. Through the late 1940s, she continued to paint depictions of unreal scenes, some of which combined erotic subjects with enigmatic symbols and desolate space. Over the next decade, Tanning's painting evolved, becoming less explicit and more suggestive.
Dorothea, together with her husband Max Ernst, whom she married in 1946, lived in Sedona, Arizona, and some time later, in 1949, Tanning and Ernst relocated to France, where they divided their time between Paris and Touraine, returning to Sedona for intervals through the early and mid 1950s. They lived in Paris and later in Provence until Ernst's death in 1976, after which Tanning returned to New York.
While living in France, Dorothea's work radically changed and her images became increasingly fragmented and prismatic, exemplified in works such as Insomnias (1957). Also, during her time in France in the 1950s-1970s, Tanning also became an active printmaker, working in ateliers of Georges Visat and Pierre Chave and collaborating on a number of limited edition artists’ books with such poets as Alain Bosquet, Rene Crevel, Lena Leclerq and André Pieyre de Mandiargues.
She continued to create studio art in the 1980s, then turned her attention to writing and poetry in the 1990s and 2000s, working and publishing until the end of her life. Her poems were published regularly in literary reviews and magazines such as The Yale Review, Poetry, The Paris Review and The New Yorker.
Voltagem
Musical Chairs
Some Roses and Their Phantoms
The Civilizing Influence
Max in a Blue Boat
On Time Off Time
Blue Mom
A Very Happy Picture
Tango Lives
Deirdre
Insomnies (Insomnias)
Door 84
The Truth About Comets
Woman Artist, Nude, Standing
Endgame
On Avalon
A Mi-Voix
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Dionysos SOS
Touristes de Prague III (Tourists of Prague III)
Still in the Studio
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Birthday
Portefeuille (Pocketbook)
The Guest Room
Dream of Luxury
Interior with Sudden Joy
Beautiful Girl
Guardian Angels
Maternity
Palaestra
Far From
Quotations:
"Women artists. There is no such thing – or person. It’s just as much a contradiction in terms as "man artist" or "elephant artist". You may be a woman and you may be an artist, but the one is a given and the other is you."
"Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now."
Homer Shannon, a writer, was the first husband of Dorothea. Some time later, the couple divorced, and in 1946, Tanning married Max Ernst, a painter and sculptor.