Modern & Contemporary Sale Art + Design & Watches
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To be sold at our Important Sale: Modern & Contemporary Art + Design & Watches 12 – 14 November 2024
Lot 511 André Masson (France 1896‑1987). ”Dante et Béatrice”. Signed André Masson lower left. Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 28 cm.
Executed in 1935.
300.000 – 400.000 SEK
€ 26.000 – 35.000
Galerie Simon, Paris, inv. no. 12178 (No PH 10882).
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.
Dr Erik Velander.
Svensk-Franskas Konstauktioner, auction no. 95, 3 November 1970, lot 72.
A Swedish private collection, acquired at the above sale.
Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, ”André Masson”, 22 October-13 November 1960, cat. no. 4.
Guite Masson, Martin Masson & Catherine Lœwer, André Masson: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint 1919‑1941, 2010, cat. no. 11, p. 222, illustrated.
The legendary love story of Dante and his Beatrice has throughout the centuries made a huge impact with its heartbreaking theme of the love impossible, like that of Romeo and Juliet. The supreme poet Dante Alghieri saw Beatrice Portinari for the first time at the age of nine and then again nine years later, when he was completely taken by her. It was love at first sight but the turreted and walled Florence of the 13th century, with great family rivalries and divisions by social classes, made passion doomed from the beginning. Beatrice was the daughter of a very wealthy banker and prior of Florence. Dante was a political figure and active intellectual, one of those who lay the foundation for the early Renaissance and the new humanism. Separated by class, the passionate tale remained impossible and never actualized, they both married separately for social convenience. Unfortunately, Beatrice died of childbirth at the very young age of 24. Their profound but platonic love remained in Dante the poet’s mind, where he raised her to the level of an angelic woman who guided him through heaven in his poetry. She was his ethereal figure and great beauty, “so kind and so honest she seems”. Beatrice appears in Dante’s “Divina Commedia” and as the tributed muse he enchants in his youth poetry “Vita nuova” from around 1293. The unattainable love remains as the romantic everlasting dream where Beatrice symbolize the divine grace.
Being not only immortalized by Dante Alghieri’s poems, Beatrice has inspired artists from several eras to interpret the unconditional love and its tragedies. The Pre-Raphaelist Dante Gabriel Rosetti for example was inspired by the idealization of Beatrice. In 1935 the French painter André Masson made his interpretation of “Dante et Béatrice” in the painting included in this sale. In a dramatic surrealist composition the faces of the beloved ones appears as masks of the commedia dell’arte. Beatrice is facing the viewer in different tones of poisonous green. Her face has been deconstructed, one eye in blue, the other in purple and red and with an oblique mouth in red. Her head is crowned with an undulating loop of ivy where the veins of the leaves appear in purple. The depraved face of Dante is shown in profile. Marked by the harsh reality he is shown as an elderly man with deep wrinkles and sunken mouth and hook. Clearly though, is that Masson in his painting focuses on Dante and his despair, where he stands out from the darker shadow with his shining face and the red and blue hood. Along Dante’s cheek are three silver drops dramatically falling from his eye, making him the symbol of the man of sorrows.
André Masson achieved his artistic education at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, which was followed by additional studies in Paris, at this time he became interested in paintings by Nicolas Poussin with mythological themed, subjects that he would later treat in his own paintings. During World War I he fought for France in the infantry and became seriously injured. After an extended hospitalization, where he suffered both physically and mentally from the traumatized wartime, he settled in Paris. Masson’s early works were influenced by the cubist imagery. Further on, he eventually became acquainted with the surrealist movement and became one of the most enthusiastic practitioners of automatic drawing. In 1924 André Breton invited Masson to join the Surrealist group with whom he remained in an on-and-off relation until 1943 when he made a final break with the group. The years between 1934-36 where spent in Spain, when “Dante et Béatrice” was executed. During these years he was inspired by the bullfights, Spanish myths etc. Masson went into exile in the United States during World War II, initially in New York, where he continued his experiments within the automatism and influenced the younger generations of artists, like Jackson Pollock. Later on, he settles in the rural Connecticut and developed an expressive landscape painting style. After the war, Masson returned to France again and continued to explore his artistic journey being inspired by the Zen Buddhism, the impressionism, the abstract expressionism and the French tachisme. In 1954 he received the Grand Prix National des Art. During the fifties, he turned to a completely abstract style and in 1958 an entire room was dedicated to his paintings at the Venice Biennale. ■