Danger, Construction Ahead

1940

Oil on canvas

44 x 62 in., 5 lb. (111.8 x 157.5 cm, 2.27 kg) framed: 44 13/16 x 62 7/8 x 1 1/2 in. (113.82 x 159.7 x 3.81 cm)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh J. Chisholm, Jr., B.A. 1936

1960.63.3

Danger, Construction Ahead shows a sentinel-lined bridge abruptly ending at a sharp point. In 1940, when Kay Sage painted this otherworldly landscape, she had just returned to her native United States after a long period abroad. Later that year, she married the Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, who aided her transition from life in Italy and Paris to New York. The clear highlight of her first solo exhibition in New York, this painting began a prolific phase in Sage’s work of “intuitive sceneries,” in which the imagination shaped all.

Culture:

American

Period:

20th century

Classification:

Paintings

Status:

Not on view

Bibliography:

Dr. Ilene Susan Fort, Tere Arcq, and Terri Geis, eds., In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, exh. cat. (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2012), 30, fig. 12.

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.