Mythe de la Roche Percée by Yves Tanguy, 1900-1955

Yves Tanguy, 1900-1955
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Mythe de la Roche Percée

Original etching in black ink. 1947. Signed in pencil. Numbered in pencil from the original edition of 100 impressions. Printed at Hayter's Studio Atelier 17, New York 1947. Issued by Editions Hémisphères, Paris 1947, for the series: Mythe de la Roche Percée.
Provenance: Frumkin Gallery, Chicago. 1950
Ref: Wittrock - Tanguy Graphic Work no 14 a

Note: From the original edition not from the questionable re-issue.

Extremely fine crisp impression printed with a light plate- tone. On off-white textured wove paper, as issued. Generally excellent original condition; the upper right tip of the sheet in the outer margin replaced. Full margins. Sheet 10 x 7 1/2ins. Plate: 6 7/8 x 4 7/8ins. (175x125mm).

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Tanguy drew only 31 prints but they are amongst the most individual and creative of the surrealist era. They are now very seldom seen on the market.

During his youth Tanguy spent many holidays on the coast of Northern France with his father who worked for the French Admiralty. He later wrote that it was during these holidays that he became fascinated by the surfaces, contours and quality of constant evolution in rock formations. At the beginning of the 1920?s when he began to draw it was these forms that came to mind, and they were to become the basic element of his artistic imagery. In 1924 he met Duchamp, and in the following year he was invited by Breton to join the circle of the Surrealists. By 1927 he was totally involved in painting using images whose dream-form shapes, complex surfaces and convoluted forms were derived from rock forms. In 1939 he left France to seek asylum in America away from the war.

In 1934 Tanguy had been encouraged by Hayter to start working in etching, and when he was in New York, where Hayter set up a new branch of his Paris Atelier 17, he continued to experiment with etchings learning greatly from Hayter?s extraordinary technical invention. The etchings that he made there, including the one above, have an extraordinary and totally individual character in which figures, natural shapes and a quality of strange but constant movement and evolution are interwoven.

Note: This etching was part of the series of three etched and printed in 1947 under the title of ?Le Mythe de la Roche Percée - the Myth of the Pierced Rock?. Sometime a bit later a form of reprint or reworking of one of the plates (not that above) appeared on the market with a doubtful signature. This impression is from the original edition, correctly signed and numbered, and was originally bought from the Frumkin Gallery in Chicago before the reissue appeared.