ALICE RAHON ALICE RAHON Born 1904 Chenecey-Buillon, France Died 1987 Mexico City, Mexico Alice Rahon, photograph by Walter Reuter, n/d “In earliest times painting was magical; it was the key to the invisible. In those days the value of a work lay in its powers of conjuration, a power that talent alone could not achieve. Like the shaman, the sibyl, and the wizard, the painter had to make himself humble, so that he could share in the manifestation of spirits and forms.” Alice Rahon, 1951 Exhibition catalogue, Willard Gallery, New York, 1951 Le femme qui neige, 1945 Oil and sand on canvas board 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches (25.1 x 20 cm) $95,000 Untitled, 1960 Oil and sand on canvas board 18 x 24 inches (45.7 x 61 cm) $175,000 A Flower for Angela (A Tribute to Angela Davis), c. 1975 Mixed media on canvas 21 5/8 x 13 3/4 inches (55 x 35 cm) $95,000 Androgyne, 1946 Wire marionette 26 x 11 x 1 inches (66 x 28 x 2.5 cm) $125,000 Byblos, 1963 Oil on canvas 27 1/2 x 67 inches (69.9 x 170.2 cm $400,000 Alice Rahon: Poetic Invocations, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FL, November 26, 2019 – March 29, 2020, photography: Daniel Bock Pictured: Androgyne and Byblos Untitled, n/d Assemblage with painted wood, olive snail shells, natural fibers, feathers, sand, beads, and iron alloy tacks 22 x 4 x 11 1/2 inches (55.9 x 10.2 x 29.2 cm) $65,000 Thunderbird, 1946 Oil on canvas 12 5/8 x 39 inches (32.1 x 99.1 cm) $350,000 Alice Rahon: Poetic Invocations, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FL, November 26, 2019 – March 29, 2020, photography: Daniel Bock Pictured: Untitled and Thunderbird Su majestad y la luna or Luna llena y gata blanca (Her Majesty and the Moon or Full Moon and White Cat), 1956 Oil and sand on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 7/8 inches (60 x 50.5 cm) $125,000 Stetie, Salah, “Alice Rahon, imaginière de féeries,” L’Orient, Beirut, Lebanon, October 22, 1962 Pictured: Alice Rahon with Su majestad y la luna (Luna llena y gata blanca) Painting for a Little Ghost Who Couldn’t Learn to Read, 1947 Oil and sand on canvas 35 1/4 x 28 13/16 inches (89.5 x 73.2 cm) $750,000 La noche de Tepoztlán, 1964 Oil and sand on canvas 27 1/2 x 33 7/8 inches (69.9 x 86 cm) $300,000 “The invisible speaks to us, and the world it paints takes the form of apparitions; it awakens in each of us that yearning for the marvelous and shows us the way back to it...” Alice Rahon, 1951 Exhibition catalogue, Willard Gallery, 1951 GALLERY WENDI NORRIS ALICE RAHON I BIOGRAPHY Alice Rahon (nee Alice Marie Yvonne Philippot)was born in Chenecey-Buillon, France, on Writing poetry under her married name, Alice Paalen, she spent the 1930s amongst the Parisian June 8, 1904. After publishing three volumes of poetry, she turned to the visual arts at the Surrealists and associated artists. In1936, Breton arranged for the publication of her first book, A age of thirty-six and spent her mature years working almostexclusively as a painter. Rahon meme la terre (On the Bare Ground), with an engraving by Yves Tanguy. A second collection of died in MexicoCity in1987, a naturalized citizen of Mexico. poetry, Sablier couche (Hourglass Lying Down), appeared in1938 with an etclh ing by Mir6. Her third and final volume of poetry was published in 1941 as Nair animal (Animal Black), with a portrait The visual vocabulary Rahon created over the course of her career as a pai nter can be seen of her by Paalen.Hearing of her nascent interest in prehistoric art, Mlir6 had suggested in1933 as a fulfillment (rather than an abandonment) of her early commitment to language. Like her that she and Paalen visit Altamira, Spain. Her encounter with the polychromaitc cave paintings of poetry, Rahon's paintings are thick with mythology and magic, memory and meaning. Altamira would prove fonmative to Rahon's laterdevelop1mentas a visual artist. Compelled as deeply by prehistoriccave paintings as by the Surrealistmilieu in which she lived and worked, Rahon wove symbols, colors, and textures together in delicate A second encounter was equally transformative. In1939, Rahon met Frida Kahlo in Paris, who combinations of figuration and abstraction. Modern analogs to the petroglyphsthat inspired invited her to Mexico. With the threat of war on the horizon, she and Paalen departed with Swiss them, Rahon's paintings are expressions of an artistic sensibility that reachesfrom the photographer Eva Sulzer to British Columbiaand 1madetheir way south through Alaska and down blank canvas of the present into the cavernous recesses of prehistory. the Pacific coast to Mexic o City, where they would ultimately settle. The indigenous art she studied on that trip, along with her previous exposure to prehistoric imagery, infonmed her Little is known of Rahon's childhood, but a brief account of her early years reveals an interest in visual art. After 1941 and with the appearance of her final volume of verse, she would independent and charismatic young woman of prodig ious talent. At some point during her dedicate herself almost exclusively to painting. twenties she moved to Paris, where she created hats for the Surrealist-influenced fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelllii. She was introduced to Man Ray, for whom she modeled, and In MexicoCity, under Paalen's tutelage and in the company of e1migre Surrealists such as became friends with Joan Miro. In1931 she met the Austrian painter WolfgangPaalen (1905- Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, Rahon began to paint. One can see the influencesof 1959), who brought her into the circle of Surreali sts led by Andre Breton. She and Paalen her friends Paul Klee and Mir6 in lher early work, but her deepest inspirations arise from the were married in1934. anonymous artists of Altamira and the indigenous artists of the Americas. Utilizing various media (ink, gouache, crayons, sand, pulverized volcanic rock, iron wire) and found objects (feathers, leaves, butterfly wings), Rahon created images rooted in !l andscapes, redolent of timelines, and abundant with magic and ritual. She made a practice of sgraffito,scratching tlhrough the surface of her paintings to reveal a lower layer of contrasting color. ALICE RAHON | BIOGRAPHY continued The result is in Rahon’s case an iconography that is at once universal and personal, Her work has also been featured in various museum exhibitions of Surrealism and Mexican mysterious and immediate, abundant with stories and secrets. Crafted in the tradition of the modernism, including Fantastic Women at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, and the Louisiana Surrealists by whom she was surrounded, inspired and influenced by the art of the Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek (2020); Modern Couples at the Centre Pompidou-Metz indigenous people of the Americas, Rahon’s work is simultaneously a provocation and a (2018); México 1900-1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco y las direct, unmediated experience of the marvelous and the astonishing. vanguardias at the Grand Palais, Paris, and the Dallas Museum of Art, TX (2017); Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism 1910-1950 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museo del Once she started painting, Rahon was recognized almost immediately as an accomplished Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2016-2017); artist. The San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) Frida Kahlo: Conexões entre mulheres surrealistas no México, at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, presented the first of two solo museum exhibitions of her work in 1945. Over the course of São Paulo, the Caixa Cultural Rio de Janeiro, and the Caixa Cultural de Brasília (2015); and her lifetime, Rahon would create roughly 750 works of art and go on to exhibit widely in the Farewell to Surrealism: The DYN Circle in Mexico at the Getty Research Institute, Los United States and Mexico, as well as in Paris and Lebanon. She exhibited regularly with Angeles, CA (2012-2013). prominent galleries that included Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century in New York, Caresse Crosby in Washington, D.C., Stendhal and Copley Galleries in Los Angeles, and In 2012, Aubé Breton Elléouët, the daughter of André Breton, produced a documentary on Galería de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City. Rahon’s work is currently in the collections of the Alice Rahon’s life and work entitled Alice Rahon, l’abeille noire (Alice Rahon: The Black Bee). Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, MO; the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and the Davis Museum at In 2021, NYRB Poets will release a comprehensive collection of Rahon’s poetry, translated by Wellesley College, MA, among others. The Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City Mary Anne Caws, that includes newly discovered letters and poems from Picasso, Breton, presented a solo Rahon show in 1986. and Paalen, among others. There has been a resurgence of interest in Rahon’s visual and written work over the last Gallery Wendi Norris will be the first gallery to present a solo exhibition of Alice Rahon since decade, catalyzed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 2012 show In Wonderland: 1965. The show is currently scheduled for 2021. The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States.