Andre' Masson Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

André Aimé René Masson (Balagny-sur-Thérain, 4 January 1896 – Paris, 28 October 1987) was a French painter. André Masson dedicated his artistic life to the exploration of the irrational world through art, as a direct sublimation of the conflicts with primary forces, which he had experienced during his experience in the First World War. Read the full biography

Andre' Masson Biography

André Aimé René Masson (Balagny-sur-Thérain, 4 January 1896 – Paris, 28 October 1987) was a French painter. André Masson dedicated his artistic life to the exploration of the irrational world through art, as a direct sublimation of the conflicts with primary forces, which he had experienced during his experience in the First World War. Born in France, in Picardy, he moved with his family to Belgium, where he began his artistic training at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1912 he moved to Paris where he attended the Académie des beaux-arts, showing a strong interest in Cubism. He was a friend of the painter Maurice Loutreuil (1885-1925) and traveled with him in Italy. In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the artist was called up for military service. During the war Masson was seriously wounded in the chest and sent to convalesce in Paris. A large part of Masson's artistic production during the 1920s appears influenced by the trauma of war. In the post-war period Masson came into contact with surrealist circles through André Breton. Under the influence of the surrealists, Masson experimented with various techniques of "automatic" artistic production, i.e. linked to random factors. For example, the technique of automatic drawing with pen and ink or that of automatic painting which consisted of dripping glue onto the canvas, then passing sand over the glue stains and painting in oil on the basis of the shapes that were randomly created on the canvas. Masson believed that working in a reduced state of consciousness helped the artist to free himself from the control of rationality and to come into full contact with the creativity of the unconscious: to achieve this aim he sometimes painted under the influence of drugs or by undergoing long periods of fasting or sleep deprivation. Towards the end of the 1920s, Masson began to find the automatic techniques of surrealism limiting and left the surrealist movement in search of a more structured style. In this period he produced works with violent or erotic themes, especially in relation to the events of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 Masson designed the cover of the first issue of Acéphale, the magazine founded by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, and continued to collaborate with the publication until 1939. Towards the end of the 1930s the artist became closer to the surrealist group. At the outbreak of World War II, under the German occupation of France, Masson's works were considered degenerate art. Thanks to the help of Varian Fry, Masson managed to escape his country on a ship to Martinique and reach the United States. Upon his arrival in New York, customs officers who inspected his luggage seized some of his erotic drawings, destroying them before the artist's eyes. Masson settled in New Preston, Connecticut, and his works profoundly influenced abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock. After World War II, Masson returned to France and settled in Aix-en-Provence, where he began to paint landscapes. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the last private owner of Gustave Courbet's provocative painting The Origin of the World, purchased in 1955, asked Masson to build a wooden frame for the painting with a sliding panel that could hide it. Masson created a surrealistic and evocative version of Courbet's painting on the panel. The artist was now considered a master of surrealism. Important retrospectives were dedicated to him in Berlin and Amsterdam. In 1972 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale.