Dorothea Tanning

About

Dorothea Tanning was an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, writer, and poet born in Galesburg, Illinois, to Swedish immigrant parents. Largely self-taught after brief studies at Knox College and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, she moved to New York in 1935, supporting herself as a commercial artist while discovering Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art's 1936 'Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism' exhibition. Her early career featured dreamlike figurative paintings, leading to her association with Surrealists after meeting Max Ernst in 1942; they married in 1946 and lived between the U.S., Paris, and Provence until his death in 1976.

Evolved from Surrealist dreamlike figurative scenes to abstraction, soft fabric sculptures, and large-scale flower paintings