WOLFGANG PAALEN
Projét pour un monument (Project for a Monument), 1945 Projét pour un monument (Project for a Monument) is one of very few sculptural objects in Paalen’s
WOLFGANG oeuvre, and the only of its scale. A “project for a PAALEN monument” the artist hoped to construct in Mexico Projét pour un monument City, the piece is inspired by the totemic artifacts (Project for a Monument), 1945 Wood he encountered in the Cicladic Islands, Altamira, 94 x 15 x 4 inches (239 x 38 x 10 cm) Archive no. 45.11 Spain, and the Pacific Northwest. Paalen once sated, “all absrac art is siritual.”
Influenced by the father of modern anthropology, Franz Boas, Paalen’s critical art theory and pracice was largely rooted in a cultural pluralism, repudiating racial sereotypes in favor of a beter undersanding of human diversity. Specifically, Paalen’s art seaks to the cohesion of indigenous cultures, myths, environments, and rituals from the Cycladic Islands to Mexico and the Pacific Northwes. In the mid to late 40s, Paalen’s ethnographic influences venture towards a mysical, cosmic sensibility. He repeatedly sated, “Art, science and religion are inseparable”.
Wolfgang Paalen with a maquette for Projét pour un monument (Project for a Monument) in his studio. A New Vision-Paalen, Mullican, Onslow-Ford: Dynaton, San Francisco Museum of Art, January 23 – March 4, 1951 “…we have to reach a potential concept of reality, based as much on the new directives of physics as on those of art, a concept that I call dynatic (from the Greek word to dynaton: the possible). A Philosophy of the Possible which would understand art as a rhythmic equation of the world, indispensable complement of the logical equation that science makes.”
-Wolfgang Paalen, from an interview with Carter Stone published as “During the Eclipse” in DYN issue 6 (April 1944), p. 20
A New Vision-Paalen, Mullican, Onslow-Ford: Dynaton, San Francisco Museum of Art, January 23 – March 4, 1951 Wolfgang Paalen (1905–1959): An Austrian Surrealist in Paris and Mexico, Belvedere Museum, Lower Belvedere, Vienna, Austria, October 4, 2019 – January 19, 2020 PROVENANCE Lucid Art Foundation, Inverness, CA Studio of the artist, Mill Valley (1951)
SELECT EXHIBITIONS Galería de Arte Moderno, Mexico, February 1945 Dynaton, (Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Lee Mullican), San Francisco Museum of Art, 1951 Homenaje a Wolfgang Paalen, el precursor, Museo de Arte Moderno, Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City, September - October 1967 California: 5 Footnotes to Modern Art History (Dynaton Revisited), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, January 18 - April 24, 1977 Wolfgang Paalen: Zwischen Surrealismus und Abstraktion, Museum Moderner Kunst-Siftung, Ludwig, Vienna, September 24 - November 7, 1993 Wolfgang Paalen: Philosopher of the Possible, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, February 6 - March 29, 2014 Wolfgang Paalen. The Austrian Surrealist in Paris and Mexico, Belvedere Museum, Lower Belvedere, Vienna, October 4, 2019 – January 19, 2020
SELECT LITERATURE Gustav Regler. Wolfgang Paalen. New York City: Nierendorf Editions, 1946, p. 49 Homenaje a Wolfgang Paalen, el precursor. Exhibition catalogue. Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 1967 California: 5 Footnotes to Modern Art History (Dynaton Revisited). Exhibition catalogue. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977, p.45 Andreas Neufert. Wolfgang Paalen: Im Inneren des Wals. Vienna/New York: Springer, 1999, p. 317 Wolfgang Paalen: Philosopher of the Possible. Exhibition catalogue. Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, 2014 Wolfgang Paalen. The Austrian Surrealist in Paris and Mexico. Exhibition catalogue. London: Koenig Books Ltd., 2020, p. 200 ABOUT WOLFGANG PAALEN
Wolfgang Paalen catalyzed critical art and intellectual theory, invented new automatist painting techniques and inspired some of the most important artists of the 20th century.
Born in Vienna in 1905, he was exposed to the elite members of art and academic society of the age including Hans Hofmann, Julius Meier-Graefe, Hans Arp, Fernand Léger, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. As an adult, his pioneering art innovations and theories were shared with and informed by the top thinkers including André Breton, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. Fleeing war-torn Europe for Mexico in 1939, at the invitation of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Paalen made Mexico his home. Paalen and his new wife, Luchita Hurtado del Solar, moved to Mill Valley, California in 1948, where Paalen formed the Dynaton Group with Gordon Onslow Ford and Lee Mullican. Hurtado eventually divorced Paalen and married Mullican in 1950. Paalen returned to Mexico and remained there until his death in 1959.
An avid collector and theorist, Paalen's art was in an ever-constant state of change to reflect his environmental surroundings. He amassed an important collection of ethnological artifacts, many of which now belong to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Wolfgang Paalen's paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures have been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad and are represented in many museum collections including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Britain, London, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Paalen founded the influential art magazine, DYN, which includes writing and works from some of the most important artists of this era and catalyzed much of 21st century art theory, which culminated in a dedicated exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2012.
In 2019 - 2020, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna presented a solo exhibition of the artist, Wolfgang Paalen: An Austrian Surrealist in Paris and Mexico.