The Davis presents Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy, the first major touring exhibition to explore the dynamic exchange of ideas that shaped the astonishing landscapes of these Surrealist artists.
This groundbreaking exhibition, which features approximately 25 paintings along with selected ephemera by each artist, provides unprecedented access to the couple’s intertwined artistic and personal lives.
Sage and Tanguy were inseparable throughout their 15-year marriage, sharing adjoining studios in Woodbury, CT and communicating only in French until Tanguy’s untimely death in 1955. As Karen Rosenberg writes in the New York Times, this “fascinating” exhibition “intently explores the couple’s sinister dreamscapes of polymorphous pebbles (his) and menacing monoliths (hers).” Both artists sought to create paintings that the French poet André Breton called “peinture-poésie,” a style influenced by poetry and dream-like imagery.
Organized by the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York, and The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, Double Solitaire is curated by Stephen Robeson Miller and Jonathan Stuhlman, two of the country’s foremost scholars of Surrealism. Major funding for the exhibition was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. The presentation at the Davis is generously supported by Wellesley College Friends of Art, and the Sandra Cohen Bakalar ’55 Fund.