La Femme Poursuivie. Woman Pursued. by Andre Masson, 1896-1987

Andre Masson, 1896-1987
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La Femme Poursuivie. Woman Pursued.

Original drypoint in black ink. c.1946. Signed in pencil. Numbered (19) in pencil from the edition of 30. Plate completed by Masson c.1946. Edition printed at the studio of Crommelynck and Dutrou, Paris 1958. Edition issued 1958. by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris. Very rare.
Ref: Saphire 235. 1946.

Extremely fine rich impression with very tonal wiping. On pale cream wove BFK Rives paper. Image area excellent condition; minor discolouration in the margins from an old mount. Full margins. Sheet: 19 3/4 x 13ins. Plate: 11 x 7ins. (279x179mm)

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A very powerful composition whose imagery reflects the destruction and terror of war. The handling of the drypoint is almost ferocious, with the jagged expressionist lines rich in ink tone, the force of the strokes full of Masson's inner emotion. Completed in 1946 the edition was not in fact printed until 1958.

Against a background of forms inspired by the aftermath of a bomb-torn landscape a couple still meet in hope. Etching and completed in 1946, very shortly after Masson had returned to Europe from New York, to where he had escaped for the war years, this work not only reflects his reaction to seeing for the first time some of the land over which the European battles had been fought, but also his desire to use the vision of such terrible sights as a means of re-entering the world of subconscious emotion which had been uppermost in his thinking during his main surrealist period from 1936 to 1940.