Mennon and Butterflies
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
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.
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) frame: 50 1/4 × 60 1/4 × 3 in. (127.6 × 153 × 7.6 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)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Mennon and Butterflies
Date
1942
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
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)
Credit Line
Gift of The Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation
Accession Number
2004.30.19
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
Copyright for this work may be controlled by the artist, the artist's estate, or other rights holders. A more detailed analysis of its rights history may, however, place it in the public domain. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Have information?
Have information about an artwork? Contact us at
