Journeys: Chapter One: Dorothea Tanning: Mermaids and Metaphors

Dorothea Tanning, born in Galesburg, Illinois in 1910, lived an extraordinary life as an artist and a writer. Over a career of more than seventy years, she created a significant body of paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and prints, and published memoirs, a novel, and two collections of poetry, the latter of which was released just a few months before her death in 2012, aged 101. While solo museum shows at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden and Camden Arts Centre, UK (1993) and The Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000) that were mounted during her lifetime surveyed her work from its roots in Surrealism to its full individual expression, since 2012 Tanning's art has been re-evaluated, resulting in a retrospective exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2018) and Tate Modern, London (2019). Tanning’s work is now represented in major museum collections such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Tate Modern, London; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which recently acquired two important paintings by the artist. Earlier this year, Lund Humphries published the monograph Dorothea Tanning: Transformations written by Victoria Carruthers. Tanning was not only an artist but also a philanthropist, and endowed the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award mastery in the art of poetry, and two foundations, The Dorothea Tanning Foundation and The Destina Foundation, which work in partnership to preserve Tanning's legacy, foster a broader public understanding of her cultural contributions, and distribute the art and assets of her estate for philanthropic purposes.

Alison Jacques has worked with Dorothea Tanning, her estate, and her foundations since 2011.

Image: Dorothea Tanning in her studio, New York, 1993. Photo: Steven Brown Studio

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