Dorothea Tanning: Worlds In Collision

The exhibition features a rarely displayed body of late work dating from 1981 to 1989, which is being shown together for the first time in the United Kingdom. It includes large scale works on paper in media as varied as graphite, charcoal, crayon, watercolour, gouache, and collage, many of which focus on imagery of the bicycle which preoccupied Tanning at this time. The exhibition coincides with the publication of the monograph Dorothea Tanning: Transformations by Victoria Carruthers, which will be released by Lund Humphries in January 2020.

The works presented were created during the decade following Tanning’s return to New York in 1980 after having lived in France for some thirty years. Many encapsulate the energy of city life she enjoyed in Manhattan, propelled forward by speed and sound.

In 1988, the artist began working on a series of images in which the form of the bicycle is central. Many of these works were inspired by a bicycle accident Tanning had witnessed near her studio on the Lower East Side.