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Mennon and Butterflies
Kurt Seligmann
Contemporary Art
To create the spiraling, anthropomorphic figures seen here, Kurt Seligmann traced patterns of cracked glass that he projected onto his canvas. He was inspired by the vast open terrain of the American Southwest and elements from European mythology to create what he described as psychological, “cyclonic” landscapes where “living beings seem to detach themselves from tortuous geological formations. A world in formation—not the heroic landscapes of prehistory, but rather a lyrical one.”
The year he made this painting, Seligmann participated in the exhibition Artists in Exile at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, along with fourteen of his fellow European modernists who fled Nazism and moved to New York, including André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Ossip Zadkine.
The year he made this painting, Seligmann participated in the exhibition Artists in Exile at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, along with fourteen of his fellow European modernists who fled Nazism and moved to New York, including André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Ossip Zadkine.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1942
DIMENSIONS
49 × 58 1/2 in. (124.5 × 148.6 cm)
frame: 50 1/4 × 60 1/4 × 3 in. (127.6 × 153 × 7.6 cm) (show scale)
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
2004.30.19
CREDIT LINE
Gift of The Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Kurt Seligmann (Basel, Switzerland, 1900 – 1962, Sugar Loaf, New York). Mennon and Butterflies, 1942. Oil on canvas, 49 × 58 1/2 in. (124.5 × 148.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of The Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation, 2004.30.19. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2004.30.19.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 2004.30.19.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2005
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
© artist or artist's estate
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