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Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 1913, in Milan; died 1993.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, engraver, sculptor, illustrator. Figures, landscapes, still-lifes, animals. Stage sets.

Clerici was a keen reader of the Surrealist review Le Minotaure in his youth, and this strongly influenced his later work.

From the outset of his career, he was active in creating stage sets for opera, ballet and the theatre, at the Fenice in Venice, the Rome opera house and other venues, for the works of Monteverdi, Purcell, Lulli, Goldoni and Stravinsky. He also worked as a book illustrator. In his more personal work, he first gained a reputation as a sculptor. After ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 4 January 1896, in Balagny (Oise); died 28 October 1987, in Paris.

Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, sculptor, engraver, illustrator. Stage sets.

Paris Surrealist group.

André Masson came from the region of Compiègne, Beauvais and Senlis. His father sold wallpaper. He lived in Balagny until the age of eight. Following a short stay in Lille his father's work took the family to Brussels, where he attended school until the age of 12. He then became an apprentice, working in the afternoons as a draughtsman in an embroidery studio and studying at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in the mornings and evenings....

(b Balagne, Jan 4, 1896; d Paris, Oct 28, 1987).

French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and stage designer. His work played an important role in the development of both Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, although his independence, iconoclasm, and abrupt stylistic transitions make him difficult to classify. Masson was admitted to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts et l’Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Brussels at the age of 11. Through his teacher Constant Montald, he met the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916), who persuaded Masson’s parents to send him to Paris for further training. Masson joined the French infantry in 1915 and fought in the battles of the Somme; he was gravely wounded, and his wartime experiences engendered in him a profound philosophy about human destiny and stimulated his search for a personal imagery of generation, eclosion, and metamorphosis.

Masson’s early works, particularly the paintings of 1922 and 1923 on a forest theme (e.g. Forest, 1923; see Leiris and Limbour, p. 93), reflected the influence of André Derain, but by late ...

(b Guadalajara, Feb 19, 1887; d Mexico City, Oct 13, 1968).

Mexican mural and easel painter, printmaker, illustrator, and stage designer. In 1903 he began studying painting in Guadalajara under Félix Bernardelli, an Italian who had established a school of painting and music there. He produced his first illustrations for Revista moderna, a magazine that promoted the Latin American modernist movement and to which his cousin, the poet Amado Nervo, also contributed poetry. In 1905 he enrolled at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Mexico City; his teachers included Antonio Fabrés, Julio Ruelas, Leandro Izaguirre (1867–1941), and Germán Gedovius. Some of his fellow students were Diego Rivera, Francisco de la Torre, Saturnino Herrán, Angel Zárraga, and Jorge Enciso. In 1905 Montenegro won a grant to travel to Europe, first studying at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1907 Montenegro moved to Paris, where he continued his studies and immersed himself in the world of contemporary art, meeting Cocteau, Picasso, Braque, and Gris, among others....

(b Basle, July 20, 1900; d Sugar Loaf, NY, Jan 2, 1962).

American painter, printmaker, sculptor, stage designer and writer of Swiss birth. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva (1920) and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1927). From this training he drew upon two dominant influences, combining a predilection for the illusionistic deep space and the clear vibrant colour of the Italian tradition with the fantastic narratives explored by earlier Swiss artists such as Johann Heinrich Füseli, Ferdinand Hodler, Urs Graf and Niklaus Manuel Deutsch.

In 1929 Seligmann moved to Paris, where he remained until 1938 and where he became associated with Surrealists. While in Paris he also became a member of Abstraction–Création and an acquaintance of Le Corbusier as well as Hans Arp, whose example led him to explore deliberately ambiguous biomorphic imagery. Although he did not formally join the Surrealist movement until 1937, he participated in Surrealist exhibitions throughout the 1930s and made use of organic and fantastic forms, often fusing natural with artificial elements. His paintings and etchings of this period, distinguished by their high degree of finish, make striking use of masks and of dancing figures constructed of abstract forms. Their sense of play, secrecy and concealment recalls the animism of the fairy tale and the Gothic tradition of northern Europe. The element of drama, tension and struggle in the dance is particularly apparent in his depiction of multiple figures. He worked in white tempera on a reddish ground, glazing over that layer with transparent colour and black outline. The highlights were added at the end in keeping with a traditional systematic approach to the illusionistic depiction of space....

Czech, 20th century, male.

Born 11 August 1899, in Cerma near Geiersberg, Bohemia; died 21 March 1942, in Prague.

Painter, watercolourist, collage artist, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator. Stage sets.

Devetsil Group, Prague Surrealist group.

Styrsky studied at the academy of fine art in Prague from 1920 to 1923...