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The largely self-taught Yves Tanguy decided to become an artist around 1923, when he was inspired by a painting by Giorgio de Chirico that he saw in a shop window. Tanguy became interested in Surrealism a year later, after reading the periodical La révolution surréaliste. André Breton welcomed him into the Surrealist group in 1925. Inspired by the metaphysical qualities of de Chirico’s work, as well as the biomorphic forms of Jean Arp, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró, Tanguy quickly developed his own fantastic vocabulary of organic, amoeba-like shapes that populate mysterious, dreamlike settings.

Tanguy painted this primordial landscape on a hinged wooden screen. Little information exists about the circumstances of the work’s making, but the artist probably intended it for a patron’s home, since many Surrealists were interested in the decorative arts and produced folding screens, furniture, and other domestic objects. In this unusual example, although the screen retains the potential to close off the private sphere, it simultaneously opens up more intimate dreams and fantasies to the outside world.