Dorothea Tanning
Arts & Music • Historical Archive • 🇺🇸 United States • 4 views

Dorothea Tanning 🇺🇸

Dorothea Margaret Tanning
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Born Aug 25, 1910 🇺🇸 Galesburg, United States
Passed Away Jan 31, 2012 New York City, United States
Lifespan 101 years old
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Notice / Correction
"Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity."

Archival Overview

American Surrealist painter, sculptor, and author whose uncanny canvases explored subconscious female desires, claustrophobic domesticity, and pioneering soft sculptures.

Biographical Record

Dorothea Tanning discovered Surrealism at the landmark 1936 MoMA exhibition 'Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism' in New York. In 1942, Max Ernst visited her studio while curating Peggy Guggenheim's 'Exhibition by 31 Women' and was captivated by her haunting self-portrait 'Birthday'—a painting depicting Tanning in Victorian attire opening endless infinite doors, guarded by a winged chimera.

Tanning married Ernst and worked extensively in Sedona and France, expanding her visual language into prismatically fractured figurative spaces and pioneering plush soft-fabric sculptures in the late 1960s that anticipated contemporary textile installation art. She continued writing poetry until her death at 101.

Key Life Milestones

1942

Birthday Self-Portrait

Painted her breakthrough surrealist self-portrait, cementing her entry into the international avant-garde.

1969

Hôtel du Pavot Soft Sculptures

Created her pioneering soft-sculpture room installation, now conserved at the Centre Pompidou.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Memorial Location
New York City, United States
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