Masson, André

Masson, André (1896–1987). French painter, printmaker, sculptor, stage designer, and writer, one of the major figures of Surrealism. He was born at Balagne and at the age of eight moved with his family to Brussels, where he studied art part-time whilst working as a pattern-drawer in an embroidery studio. In 1912 he moved to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts until the outbreak of the First World War, when he joined the army. During the war he was seriously wounded and deeply scarred emotionally. His pessimism was accompanied by a profound and troubled curiosity about the nature and destiny of man and an obscure belief in the mysterious unity of the universe; he devoted the whole of his artistic activity to penetrating and expressing this belief.

After the war Masson lived in the South of France until 1922, when he returned to Paris. Initially he was influenced by Cubism, but in 1924 he joined the Surrealist movement and remained a member until 1929, when he left in protest against Breton's authoritarian leadership. His work belonged to the spontaneous, expressive, semi-abstract variety of Surrealism, and included experiments with automatism, chance effects, and unusual materials (he sometimes incorporated sand in his paintings). Themes of metamorphosis, violence, psychic pain, and eroticism dominated his work. In 1936 he lived in Spain until the Civil War drove him back to France and in 1941–5 he took refuge from the Second World War in the USA. There his work formed a link between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. It included a series of large canvases reflecting the carnage he had lived through, among them There is No Finished World (Baltimore Museum of Art, 1942), which features disintegrating monsters symbolizing (in his own words) ‘the preciousness of human life and the fate of its enterprises, always threatened, destroyed, and recommenced'. In 1945 Masson returned to France and two years later settled at Aix-en-Provence, where he concentrated on landscape painting, achieving something of the spiritual rapport with nature associated with Chinese painting. Apart from paintings his work included designs for the theatre, book illustrations, and several sculptures. He also wrote a good deal on art, including the two-volume book Métamorphose de l'artiste (1956).