Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning engaged with various artistic disciplines throughout her career, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, collage, design, soft sculpture, installation, and writing.

Biography of Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning was born in 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois. After graduating from Galesburg Public High School in 1926, Dorothea Tanning worked at the Galesburg Public Library in 1927 and attended Knox College from 1928 to 1930.

She left college after two years to pursue a career in art, moving to Chicago in 1930 and later to New York in 1935. While in New York, she supported herself as a commercial artist while continuing to develop her own painting.

In New York, Tanning was introduced to Surrealism through the Museum of Modern Art's groundbreaking 1936 exhibition, "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism." In 1941, her talent caught the attention of Macy's art director, who connected her with gallery owner Julien Levy. Impressed by her work, Levy immediately offered to exhibit it. Levy also introduced her to the émigré Surrealists in his New York gallery, including the German painter Max Ernst.

Tanning and Ernst fell in love and married in 1946. Three years later, the couple relocated to France. They lived in Paris and later in Provence until Ernst's death in 1976. After his passing, Tanning returned to New York. In the 1980s, she continued creating studio art, but in the 1990s and 2000s, she shifted her focus to writing and poetry, actively working and publishing until the end of her life. Tanning passed away in 2012.

Dorothea Tanning's Famous Paintings

The surreal imagery in Tanning's 1940s paintings and her close connections with artists and writers of the Surrealist movement have led many to consider Tanning a Surrealist painter. However, over the course of her six-decade career, she developed her own distinctive style.

Her famous pieces include "Birthday" (1942), "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (1943), "Some Roses and their Phantoms" (1952), "Tableau vivant (Living Picture)" (1954), "Insomnias" (1957), "L’Heure mauve (The Mauve Hour)" (1965), "Pour Gustave l’adoré" (1974), "Poses Outside the Studio" (1979), "Odalisque Plagued by Eyrinis" (1982), "Blue Mom" (1994), "Victory" (2005), among others.

Dorothea Tanning's Art Style

Tanning was inspired by Gothic and Romantic literature as well as Surrealism, crafting fantastical and dream-like worlds to explore the human form and condition. Though her imagery and techniques evolved over the decades, she remained committed to bringing imaginary worlds to life through her art.

Her early oil paintings may seem similar to her commercial work, with detailed interiors and landscapes featuring finely drawn women adorned with flowers and finery. However, these works also reveal a newfound freedom in their portrayal of dreamscapes, nudity, and more provocative themes. Many of her early pieces are set within domestic interiors.

Tanning's early works were filled with fantastical landscapes and architectural structures, inviting viewers to wander through multiple paths of the eye and imagination. However, from the mid-1950s onward, her imagery took a more abstract turn. Her brushstrokes loosened and became more expressive, layering gauze-like textures over bodies that appeared ecstatically in motion.

The artist experimented with various media and techniques beyond painting. In the late 1960s through early 1970s, she created soft sculptures by stitching fabric and combining stuffed elements with furniture and architecture. These sculptures occupied space in uncanny ways, evoking reclining figures and ancient statuary or emerging dreamlike from walls and furniture.