Un Coupe sur une feuille (Couple on a Leaf), André Masson

Archive Label 2003 (version1): Although considered a Surrealist working in realms of pure imagination, André Masson often produced politically-motivated pieces that protested the horrors of war in graphic visual language. After a very early start at the art academy in Brussels at the age of eleven, he also had an early introduction to the terrors of combat. In World War I, he joined the French infantry, fought in battles of the Somme, and was gravely wounded. Masson’s work immediately following the war was very introspective, which led to an alliance with the Parisian Surrealists and their theories of subconscious creativity. During the 1920s Masson worked with biomorphic abstract shapes, but in the 30s his art took on a violent tone. The artist’s response to the Spanish Civil War resulted in scenes of massacres and ritualized murders. During World War II, Masson took refuge in New York and Connecticut, where his art went through a quieter, more meditative phase. The artist did not stay in the United States after the war, but returned to France in 1946. This etching from the 1950s shows Masson’s abiding concern with gestural calligraphy and luminous color relationships, combined with a hint of symbol to intrigue the subliminal mind. Archive Label 2003 (version 2): The abstract calligraphic style used by Masson stems from his early Surrealist experiments. The founder of the Surrealist movement, André Breton, believed in and stressed the use of automatic writing as a method to evade conscious thought so that the artist’s inner psyche could be freely expressed. In 1943 Masson broke with Breton. Masson’s later works, such as this print, have their source in nature. Here what appears to be a simple leaf, on closer inspection is a more complex subject. Un couple sur une feuille was made with a technique developed at Stanley William Hayter’s print workshop, Atelier 17. Two intaglio colors were applied à la poupée to a strongly bitten plate that had a surface color applied to it with a roller. The à la poupée technique involves using a cloth formed in a ball to dab ink on the plate resulting in the rich saturated color of this print and the soft edges of its leaf and human forms.