Yves Tanguy & Alexander Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction

In 1942, at the opening of her Art of This Century gallery, Peggy Guggenheim famously demonstrated her equability toward both Surrealist and abstract art by wearing one earring made by Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy and one by abstract sculptor and kinetic artist Alexander Calder. Yet the opposition implied by this act of truce-making perhaps overstates the antimonies between these two modernist masters. Tanguy and Calder shared many friends in Surrealist circles in Paris, and showed work in the same exhibitions throughout the middle of the century. In this beautiful volume, full of color reproductions and important ephemera relating to the artists' shared history, Susan Davidson, Senior Curator of collections and exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, elucidates the overlap between these two canonical modernists.