Gallery 50A

This painting depicts Enid Haldron sitting on a low pile of adobe bricks on a vast sandy beach. Nine other characters wander the shoreline in the distance. By choosing this setting, Dalí hints at the location of Enid and her husband’s home: a seaside mansion in Monterey with its own private beach. The dancing woman on the right also suggests Enid’s past, when she would perform for charity. One of Enid’s good friends was Kathleen de Young, the daughter of the de Young museum’s founder.

Dorothy Spreckels Munn was a daughter of Alma and Adolph Spreckels, founders of the Legion of Honor. Here she is portrayed as a sea nymph, reminiscent of Renaissance depictions of Galatea. While working on this portrait, Dalí and his wife, Gala, lived with Munn for over a month; she sat for him multiple times, sometimes for hours, as he sketched her in various postures. Ultimately, Dalí abandoned these studies and rendered her in a pose developed, like the background, purely from imagination.

This work is an important example from an extended series Hofmann commenced in the mid-1930s depicting the traditional subject of the artist’s studio. However, this real-world source of inspiration is merely the pretext for his explorations of form, line, space, and color. Hofmann’s still life is fundamentally a painting about painting, and its innovative treatment of a conventional subject was an inspiration to his students—many of whom became leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.

This work is an important example from an extended series Hofmann commenced in the mid-1930s depicting the traditional subject of the artist’s studio. However, this real-world source of inspiration is merely the pretext for his explorations of form, line, space, and color. Hofmann’s still life is fundamentally a painting about painting, and its innovative treatment of a conventional subject was an inspiration to his students—many of whom became leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.

This painting captures Hartley’s love of the landscape surrounding his home near North Lovell, Maine. He had moved to the area in the fall of 1908, working alone, enduring difficult winter conditions, and painting the seasonal changes he observed in the mountains and the Maine Woods. Hartley was encouraged to show these works to Alfred Stieglitz, who was so impressed that he exhibited them at his Gallery 291 in New York City the very next month—it was Hartley’s first significant solo exhibition.

This painting captures Hartley’s love of the landscape surrounding his home near North Lovell, Maine. He had moved to the area in the fall of 1908, working alone, enduring difficult winter conditions, and painting the seasonal changes he observed in the mountains and the Maine Woods. Hartley was encouraged to show these works to Alfred Stieglitz, who was so impressed that he exhibited them at his Gallery 291 in New York City the very next month—it was Hartley’s first significant solo exhibition.

Matta’s large canvases evoke the cosmos, totems, and the human psyche. His work was, in his words, an attempt to create a “psychological morphology,” or a visible map of human consciousness. In this composition, mechanical forms float in a surreal space. The diagrammatic nature of the elements gives the impression that the painting can function as a kind of blueprint for the subconscious. This painting might also offer an example of what Matta called his “architecture of the imagination.”

Tanguy’s paintings depict hallucinatory, imaginary worlds and fantastic landscapes. The topography of this work, the alien terrain typical of Tanguy, invokes a world of dreams, while the smoothly applied paint contributes to a feeling of strange liquefaction. In contrast to the invented setting, the forms within this strange world are painted with a vivid clarity and realism. They appear to occupy the scene as towering monuments, casting strong shadows across the ground.

Tanguy’s paintings depict hallucinatory, imaginary worlds and fantastic landscapes. The topography of this work, the alien terrain typical of Tanguy, invokes a world of dreams, while the smoothly applied paint contributes to a feeling of strange liquefaction. In contrast to the invented setting, the forms within this strange world are painted with a vivid clarity and realism. They appear to occupy the scene as towering monuments, casting strong shadows across the ground.

Bloch typically included abstract religious imagery in his paintings. In this work, constellations of light evoke associations with the stars of heaven, the star of Bethlehem, and the falling stars of John’s apocalyptic book of Revelation. The shapes of these sparkling lights in the sky somehow feel both material and spiritual. In his poem “To My Palette,” Bloch described blue as a spiritual color, but this nocturnal vision of Munich appears, at first glance, to be firmly grounded on Earth.