André Masson (1896-1987), Orpheus, 1972

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Color lithograph from 1972.
Dimensions: 57 x 46 cm, 75.5 x 53 cm (sheet)
Signature in pencil, bottom: André Masson
Author's Edition: E/A

André Masson (French, 1896-1987) was a painter and printmaker whose work promoted Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. Masson was born in Balagne, France and moved to Brussels, Belgium in 1904. He attended the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts from 1907 until 1912, when he moved to Paris.

In Paris, Masson was accepted into the studio of Paul Baudoin at the Ecole National Superieure des Beaux-Arts, where he remained until the outbreak of war. He joined the army in 1914, but three years later he was seriously wounded and spent several months in a military hospital. This trauma was reflected in his early works, which depicted battle scenes, death, blood, birds and fish, such as Furious Suns and The Battle of the Fish. Masson returned to Paris in 1922 and was influenced by André Derain (French, 1880-1954) and Cubism before joining the Surrealist artists in 1924.A year later, these artists held their first exhibition at the Pierre gallery, in which Masson participated. The artist split from the group five years later in protest of André Breton's claim to leadership of the group. Masson rejoined the Surrealist circle in 1937 and tried his hand at the Surrealists' favorite activity, automatic drawing, from which he developed a new technique that retained the element of chance. He became the leader of this new technique, which was called automatism.

In 1939 Masson emigrated to the United States and greatly influenced many American painters, especially Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956). Six years later he returned to France and painted several landscape paintings in Aix-en-Provence; these paintings were shown from 1955 to 1964 at Documentas One to Three, in 1964 in Berlin and Amsterdam, and in 1972 at the Venice Biennale. Meanwhile, he painted several paintings, notably a 1966 ceiling painting for the Théatre Odéon in Paris. Masson died in Paris, France, in 1987.