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Lot Essay
Painted in 1936, La roue de l’orage emerged at a crucial turning point in Wolfgang Paalen’s artistic career. The previous summer, he had been introduced by Paul Eluard to the formidable leader of the Surrealist movement, André Breton, and was swiftly absorbed into the circle of artists, writers and thinkers associated with the ground-breaking group. Inspired by his bourgeoning Surrealist connections, Paalen began to explore a range of innovative techniques in his paintings, deftly combining his existing language of semi-abstract forms with automatic processes. Breton in turn was enthused by Paalen’s spirited approach to art making, and his work was featured in a series of important Surrealist exhibitions that year, including “The International Surrealist Exhibition” at the Burlington Galleries, in London, and “Fantastic Art, DADA and Surrealism” at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Executed on a large scale, La roue de l’orage illustrates the earliest shifts that occurred in Paalen’s style as his engagement with the Surrealists deepened, combining his interest in semi-abstract and biomorphic forms, as well as classical art, with a greater sense of three-dimensionality and mystery. Indeed, his passion for ancient Cycladic culture remained an important touchstone for the artist during this transitional period, fuelled by his discussions with Christian Zervos in Paris, and visits to The British Museum with Roland Penrose. In the present composition, the array of forms appear to echo the smooth, simplified contours of Cycladic fertility statues and idols—the ovoid shape in the upper left corner of the canvas, in particular, harks back to the torsos and heads of these intriguing statues. Enlarged, reconfigured and transformed under Paalen’s creative eye, each shape filled with different facets of colour and delicately striated brushwork, these ambiguous, enigmatic forms appear to float freely against an expansive backdrop, a new addition to Paalen’s imagery that invokes a strange, otherworldly realm.
La roue de l’orage was acquired directly from Paalen by the British-born Surrealist artist Gordon Onslow Ford, in whose collection the work remained until his death. Paalen and Onslow Ford had first met in Paris before the Second World War, where they were both involved in Surrealist circles, particularly the group of artists and writers that surrounded Roberto Matta. With the onset of war in Europe, both painters moved across the Atlantic, settling in Mexico for much of the 1940s. Onslow Ford and his wife Jacqueline both contributed to Paalen’s avant-garde periodical DYN through this period, and when they relocated to San Francisco in 1947, they were soon followed by Paalen and his wife, the Venezuelan artist Luchita Hurtado. There, Paalen and Onslow Ford formed a new artistic community called the Dynaton Group with Lee Mullican, and promoted the meditative power of art. They staged an important group exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1951, organized by the museum’s now-legendary founding director, Grace McCann Morley, and remained close friends until Paalen’s death in 1959.
Executed on a large scale, La roue de l’orage illustrates the earliest shifts that occurred in Paalen’s style as his engagement with the Surrealists deepened, combining his interest in semi-abstract and biomorphic forms, as well as classical art, with a greater sense of three-dimensionality and mystery. Indeed, his passion for ancient Cycladic culture remained an important touchstone for the artist during this transitional period, fuelled by his discussions with Christian Zervos in Paris, and visits to The British Museum with Roland Penrose. In the present composition, the array of forms appear to echo the smooth, simplified contours of Cycladic fertility statues and idols—the ovoid shape in the upper left corner of the canvas, in particular, harks back to the torsos and heads of these intriguing statues. Enlarged, reconfigured and transformed under Paalen’s creative eye, each shape filled with different facets of colour and delicately striated brushwork, these ambiguous, enigmatic forms appear to float freely against an expansive backdrop, a new addition to Paalen’s imagery that invokes a strange, otherworldly realm.
La roue de l’orage was acquired directly from Paalen by the British-born Surrealist artist Gordon Onslow Ford, in whose collection the work remained until his death. Paalen and Onslow Ford had first met in Paris before the Second World War, where they were both involved in Surrealist circles, particularly the group of artists and writers that surrounded Roberto Matta. With the onset of war in Europe, both painters moved across the Atlantic, settling in Mexico for much of the 1940s. Onslow Ford and his wife Jacqueline both contributed to Paalen’s avant-garde periodical DYN through this period, and when they relocated to San Francisco in 1947, they were soon followed by Paalen and his wife, the Venezuelan artist Luchita Hurtado. There, Paalen and Onslow Ford formed a new artistic community called the Dynaton Group with Lee Mullican, and promoted the meditative power of art. They staged an important group exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1951, organized by the museum’s now-legendary founding director, Grace McCann Morley, and remained close friends until Paalen’s death in 1959.