André MASSON

André Masson – Biography, Etchings and Original Lithographs

André Masson was born on 4 January 1896 at Balagny-sur-Thérain, in the Oise, and died in Paris on 28 October 1987. One of the founding painters of Surrealism, he pioneered automatic drawing and the sand paintings of 1926-27, illustrated the writings of Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, and spent the Second World War in America, where his work fed directly into Abstract Expressionism. Alongside his painting he produced, over six decades, a large body of etchings, drypoints, aquatints and original lithographs, most of them conceived for books.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers a selection of unique works and prints by Masson: the pastel L’Enlèvement d’Europe (1932), the drawing Pour l’espoir (1948), the ink Monument (1960) and an untitled drawing of 1972; lithographs including an untitled sheet of 1940, La Lune et le Soleil (1968), L’Armure secrète and La Métamorphose de la femme (both 1970), Astres et visages and plates from the Sonnets de Louise Labé (1972); and the etchings Pour Saint-Pol Roux (1961, etching and aquatint), La Jérusalem délivrée and Pyrame et Thisbé (1979). Each has been chosen for the quality of the impression, the edition, provenance and condition.

Brussels, Paris and the Western Front

His father’s work took the family first to Lille and then to Brussels, where, aged eleven, Masson enrolled at the Académie royale des beaux-arts in the studio of Constant Montald. On the advice of the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren he moved on to Paris and the École des beaux-arts. Serving as a front-line infantryman, he was critically wounded in the Chemin des Dames offensive of 1917 and spent many months in hospital – an experience of violence that would surface again and again in his art. He began to paint seriously in Provence and at Céret in 1919.

Rue Blomet, Kahnweiler and the First Surrealism

In the early 1920s the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler put Masson under contract. His studio at 45 rue Blomet, next door to Joan Miró, became a meeting place for Leiris, Limbour, Artaud and Salacrou. Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon gave him his first solo exhibition in February 1924, and the same year he joined André Breton’s Surrealist group. His fluid, uncensored automatic drawings and the sand paintings that followed – glue spread on canvas, sand thrown over it – made him the movement’s most radical painter in its first decade. He broke with Breton in 1929, drew closer to Georges Bataille and painted the violent Massacres of 1931-34.

Catalonia, Acéphale and the London Exhibition of 1936

After the Paris riots of February 1934 Masson married Rose Maklès and settled at Tossa de Mar in Catalonia, where his sons Diego and Luis were born. The Spanish landscapes of these years are well represented in Britain: Ibdes in Aragon (1935), bought from Galerie Simon and owned from 1937 by Sir Kenneth Clark, passed through the Contemporary Art Society to the Tate in 1946. Back in France in 1936, Masson drew the cover of Bataille’s review Acéphale, illustrated Sacrifices with five etchings, and took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London that summer – the occasion of his reconciliation with Breton. In 1937 he designed sets and costumes for Barrault’s staging of Cervantes’s Numance.

Exile in America and the Return to Provence

Branded ‘degenerate’ under the Occupation, Masson escaped from Marseille in 1941 with the help of Varian Fry, travelling via Martinique to New York. He lived at New Preston, Connecticut, until October 1945, published Anatomy of My Universe (1943) and influenced the young Jackson Pollock. In 1947 he settled at Le Tholonet, near Aix-en-Provence, facing Mont Sainte-Victoire – the subject of The Red Lands and the Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1948), also in the Tate. A room at the 1958 Venice Biennale, the ceiling of the Théâtre de l’Odéon (1965), a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1976) and an Hommage at the Grand Palais (1977) marked his later career.

Masson in Britain: Collections and Exhibitions

The Tate holds eleven works by Masson, from the Cubist Pedestal Table in the Studio (1922) to Kitchen-maids (1962), as well as a sheet from Les Hain-Teny (1956). The most important British showing came the year of his death: André Masson: Line Unleashed, a retrospective of drawings at the Hayward Gallery in 1987, published by the South Bank Centre with contributions edited by David Sylvester. British interest went back much further: Kenneth Clark acquired Ibdes in Aragon two years after it was painted, and the 1936 London exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries introduced Masson to an English public alongside Ernst, Miró and Dalí.

The Prints: Techniques, Printers and Catalogues

Masson was above all a printmaker of the book. His first lithographs appeared in Leiris’s Simulacre (1925); Bataille’s Histoire de l’œil (1928) and L’Anus solaire (1931) followed. In New York he published Mythology of Being (Wittenborn, 1942) with a colour etching and aquatint. After the war he worked in lithography at Mourlot, made his first colour etchings in 1949 for Malraux’s Les Conquérants, and entrusted his plates to the Atelier Lacourière (Les Hain-Teny, 19 etchings and aquatints) and later to the Crommelynck brothers (Le Septième Chant, 1974). The Albertina in Vienna gave him his first print retrospective in 1958. See our notes on intaglio.

Three catalogues are standard: André Masson. Gravures 1924-1972 (Fribourg, Office du Livre, 1973); Lawrence Saphire, André Masson: The Complete Graphic Work, vol. 1, Surrealism 1924-1949 (New York, 1990), quoted as ‘Saphire 46’; and Lawrence Saphire and Patrick Cramer, André Masson: The Illustrated Books. Catalogue Raisonné (Geneva, Patrick Cramer, 1994), quoted as ‘Cramer 99’ for Le Septième Chant.

Collecting André Masson Prints: A Buyer’s Guide

Catalogue number. Ask for the Saphire or Cramer reference and check date, technique and dimensions against it.

Edition and colophon. Livres d’artiste were issued in small numbered editions, often with extra suites on Japan paper and hors-commerce copies; the edition should match the book’s colophon.

Signature. Separate prints are normally signed in pencil, whereas many book plates, such as those of Le Septième Chant, were issued unsigned. A signature printed in the stone is not a hand signature.

Review plates and posters. Lithographs bound into XXe Siècle and Galerie Louise Leiris posters are genuine but distinct from signed, numbered impressions, and should be priced accordingly.

Paper and condition. Look for full margins on Arches, Rives or Japan paper, free of foxing and light-staining; red-chalk and coloured inks fade, so use UV-filtering glazing. See our framing service and our authenticity guarantee.

We select Masson’s prints alongside those of his Surrealist circle: Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Wifredo Lam and Alberto Giacometti. Explore Surrealism and our illustrated books.

Sources and further reading

David Sylvester and Joanna Drew (eds.), André Masson: Line Unleashed, London, South Bank Centre, 1987 · André Masson. Gravures 1924-1972, Fribourg, Office du Livre, 1973 · Lawrence Saphire and Patrick Cramer, André Masson: The Illustrated Books, Geneva, 1994 · William Rubin and Carolyn Lanchner, André Masson, New York, MoMA, 1976 · Tate – André Masson · Contemporary Art Society – Ibdès de Aragon · Centre Pompidou-Metz