Existing comment:
Heavenly Bodies
1946
oil with sand on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venezia (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
Tamayo probably first saw Joan Miró's Constellations paintings in 1945, when they were smuggled out of Europe and exhibited at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Painted during the chaotic onset of World War II, those works depict colorful biomorphic figures that appear to cavort beneath crescent moons and stylized stars. Tamayo, who shared Miró's interest in the cosmos, addressed the subject more literally here, representing constellations as distinct beams of light zigzagging across a network of stars. As in many of his celestial paintings, Tamayo anchored the scene with an abstracted human figure who contemplates the night sky. |