Dorothea Tanning - The Virtues of Rebellion New York Thursday, October 20, 2022 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie André-François Petit, Paris
    Ira and Tonian Genstein, Pennsylvania (acquired in 1981)
    Elizabeth Gettinger
    Tonian and Joseph Volk, Pennsylvania (by descent from the above)
    La Salle University, Philadelphia (acquired from the above in 1985)
    Christie's, New York, May 16, 2018, lot 377
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Washington, D.C., The American Federation of Arts, The Temptation of St. Anthony. Bel Ami International Competition and Exhibition of New Paintings by Eleven American and European Artists 1946-1947, September 1946, p. 28 (illustrated, pp. 4, 29)
    Washington, D.C., Caresse Crosby Gallery, The Temptation of St. Anthony, October 1947
    Tucson, University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Sedona Collection, October 1958 - September 1959
    Museen der Stadt Köln, Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939, May 30 - August 16, 1981, no. 289, pp. 110, 381 (illustrated)
    Baltimore Museum of Art; Nashville, Frist Art Museum, Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s, February 24 - September 29, 2019

  • Literature

    Harriet Janis, "Artists in Competition: Eleven Distinguished Artists Compete in a Struggle with the Temptations of St. Anthony," Arts & Architecture, vol. 63, April 1946, p. 55 (illustrated, p. 33)
    Leo Lerman, "Hollywood: Art," Harper’s Bazaar, April 1946, p. 145 (illustrated)
    "Tempting Women," Newsweek, September 1946, p. 92 (illustrated)
    Jean Seznec, "The Temptation of St. Anthony," Magazine of Art, vol. 40, March 1947, p. 90 (illustrated)
    Marcel Jean, Histoire de la Peinture Surréaliste, Paris, 1959, pp. 322-323
    Dorothea Tanning et Les Enfants de La Nuit, exh. cat, Casino Communal, Knokke, 1967, p. 12
    Uwe M. Schneede, Surrealism, New York, 1973, p. 102
    Patrick Waldberg, Les Demeures d’Hypnos, Paris, 1976, p. 321
    Dorothea Tanning, Between Lives: An Artist and Her World, New York, 2001, p. 157
    Caroline P. Wistar, La Salle University Art Museum. Guide to the Collection, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 105 (illustrated)
    Mey-Yen Moriuchi, "Space, Place and Gender in the Art of Dorothea Tanning," in Art and Social Change. Essays on the Collection of La Salle University Art Museum, Klare Scarborough and Susan M. Dixon, eds., Philadelphia, 2016, fig. 9.1, pp. xix, 161, 166-169 (illustrated, p. 162)
    Max Ernst – D-paintings – Zeitreise der Liebe, exh. cat., Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, 2019, p. 34
    Victoria Carruthers, Dorothea Tanning: Transformations, London, 2020, p. 61 (color)

  • Catalogue Essay

    "It seems to me that a man like our St. Anthony, with his self-inflicted mortification of the flesh, would be most crushingly tempted by sexual desires and, more particularly, the vision of woman in all her voluptuous aspects. It is this phase which I have tried to depict in my painting. St. Anthony, alone in the desert, struggles against his visions; half-formed, moving in indolent suggestion, colored with the beautiful colors of sex, his desires take shape even in the folds of his own wind-tossed robes." - Dorothea Tanning

12

The Temptation of St. Anthony

signed and dated "Dorothea Tanning 45-46" lower right
oil on canvas
47 7/8 x 35 7/8 in. (121.6 x 91.1 cm)
Painted in 1945-1946.

Price On Request

The Virtues of Rebellion