Kay Sage Collection, Even In Part,

Offers A Rare Look

At The Life Of An Unusual Surrealist

By Shannon Hicks

WATERBURY — “I Walk Without Echo: An Exhibit of the Kay Sage Collection” has opened at the Mattatuck Museum Arts and History Center. The remarkable collection came to the museum in 1964–65 when the executors of the artist’s estate felt that the Mattatuck was the ideal repository for Ms Sage’s collection. While her work was long overshadowed by that of her husband, Yves Tanguy, during her lifetime, Ms Sage’s work has in recent years been the focus of increasing attention by art historians and fans of Surrealism.

Kay Sage (née Katherine Sage; 1898–1963) was one of only a few women artists involved with the Surrealist movement. Her early Surrealist work was characterized by misty landscapes filled with architectural constructions that appear to be manmade, organic, and completely alien.

Two of her earlier Surrealist works on view include “My Room Has Two Doors” and “No One Heard Thunder,” both oils on canvas and done in 1939.

“These really represent her first foray into Surrealism,” said exhibition curator Raechel Guest, who was at the museum on April 26 for the exhibition’s opening reception. An independent curator and historian, Ms Guest shared that she had been “immersed in this collection for I don’t know how long” during the reception.

Her efforts come through in a show that is loosely divided into five sections, representing much of Ms Sage’s adult life and career. It does not, however, include the full collection of Sage materials bequeathed to the museum more than 40 years ago.

“It’s just a sampling, and that’s important to keep in mind,” said Ms Guest. “We just don’t have room to put the entire collection on display.”

The exhibit includes surrealist paintings, personal objects, Mayan artifacts, collages and books of poetry, including one book with its original cover art. There is an elaborate multiple-layered collage that Ms Sage made for her husband Yves Tanguy as a valentine, and a series of 24 drawings called “The Minutes,” which tell the journey of an egg through a surrealist landscape. (Eggs, according to some of the exhibition notes, were an important component of many of Ms Sage’s paintings and themes. In fact, she titled her unpublished autobiography China Eggs.)

“‘Minutes’ was something that really was of interest to her, although many scholars miss the series entirely,” said Ms Guest.

There is also a large representation of early student work, realist painting, portraiture and landscape. One such work is a portrait of her instructor while in Rome, Carlo Carosi, done during the early 1920s. There are also watercolor illustrations from an Italian children’s book that was published under Sage’s then-married name, Kay di San Faustino. (Ms Sage married the Italian Prince Raniere de San Faustina in 1924; they divorced ten years later).

Another wall is covered with copies of exhibit announcements, reviews, and even an early career write-up from Time magazine.

Kay Sage moved to Paris by the mid-1930s and became associated with the Surrealist movement — although at first she was not exactly welcomed into the boys’ club that was Surrealism. She met the artist Yves Tanguy (1900–1955) in 1937, introduced by her friend Heinz Henghes, and the two began a relationship.

They left Paris before it was taken by the Nazis during World War II. They traveled throughout the Southwest, marrying in Reno, Nev., in 1940, and eventually bought a farmhouse in Woodbury.

When the couple settled in Woodbury, they turned their Colonial farmhouse into a thoroughly modern home. The exterior remained very historic looking however, as Mattatuck visitors can witness thanks to photos by Alexandra Darrow, a photographer friend of the couple’s. A number of Darrow’s photographs are part of the exhibition, offering an intimate view into the lives of these artists. (One photograph, interestingly, shows a Calder mobile, “Hanging Mobile,” which has long been on view in the museum’s 20th Century Room. That piece was a gift to the museum in 1964.)

They turned the barn on their property into studios; hers was reportedly as messy as his was clean.

“We both dislike terribly the idea of being a team of painters,” she told Time magazine for an article published in March 1950. “For that reason we refuse to exhibit together and never look at each other’s work until it’s finished. Naturally, I admire his work more than anything, but I try very hard not to be influenced.”

Mr Tanguy died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1955. When that happened, Ms Sage fell into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. She committed suicide in 1963.

At some point Ms Sage became a member of the Mattatuck’s Fine Arts Committee.

Following Ms Sage’s death, the paintings that were in her estate were disbursed to museums throughout the country. The executors, Pierre Matisse (son of the painter Henri), James Thrall Soby (chairman of the department of painting at MoMA) and John S. Monagan (a Waterbury attorney), believed that many of her more personal works should go to the Mattatuck.

Mr Monagan reportedly felt Ms Sage considered the Mattatuck “her hometown museum,” Ms Guest pointed out during her remarks during the exhibition’s opening in April.

Because of the efforts of these men, the Mattatuck became, said Cynthia Roznoy, a recent addition to the Mattatuck’s curatorial staff, “a wonderful repository of the Kay Sage collection.”

Ms Guest has called Ms Sage one of America’s premier surrealist artists. The exhibition she has created includes both paintings and items from Ms Sage’s personal collection that reveal the life of the artist, the development of her art, her influences and her friends.

Personal effects include a jewelry box, rings, bracelets, and necklaces, small carved jade animals, polished stones, a moth figurine, and plenty of photographs taken by Alexandra Darrow (Ms Darrow and her father Judson were neighbors and friends).

Also included, within a display case, is one of Ms Sage’s diaries, written in French, “which is extremely painful to read,” said Ms Guest. “It was writing in the months after her husband’s death and she was very depressed. It’s written beautifully, but is also full of pain.”

The final section of the exhibition is called Family & Friends. It presents mementos and gifts from family and friends from neighboring towns, including Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo, and Arshile Gorky.

Friends from New York City also visited the Woodbury home often. The couple’s home — and subsequently the museum’s collection — included works by Yves Tanguy and these friends; books in the couple’s library were often inscribed and included small drawings by these artists.

Among the pieces on view is an untitled Gorky drawing from 1944 given to the museum after Ms Sage’s death, five drawings by Tanguy, and a photograph of Sage, Tanguy, and James Thrall and Eleanor Soby.

“This was not an artist working in isolation,” Ms Guest pointed out, “She was part of a large network of artists and friends.”

This artist — who was a painter, illustrator and poet — is revealed as probably never before in the new exhibition. Ms Guest’s selections offer a look at the private life, inspirations, and artistic output of Sage, as well as her husband. It reveals her skill in the academic Realist style and her later brilliance as a Surrealist.

“I Walk Without Echo: An Exhibit of the Kay Sage Collection” is on view until June 10.

The Mattatuck Museum is at 144 West Main Street, with convenient parking directly behind the museum on Park Place. For more information about the collections, programs or this exhibit, visit MattatuckMuseum.org or call 203-753-0381, extension 10.