Lot 53B email save

Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988) route à bonifac

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oil on canvas, signed at lower right, signed verso alongside the Paris studio address 51 R. de Moulin Vert, Paris, 29 x 21? in., 73.7 x 54.6 cm.

***Provenance: Private Collection, Philadelphia (acquired directly from the artist in the late 1940s). After working in the petro-chemical business in Iran from 1922-25, Hayter finally decided to try his hand as a professional artist, moving to Paris in 1926. The following year he established his print studio, later to be called Atelier 17 after his move to 17, Rue Campagne-Premier in Montmatre in 1933. The present work is a view of Bonifacio, a commune at the southern tip of Corsica. Hayter holidayed here in the summers of 1926-9, undoubtedly creating the present work En Plein Air. The same subject appears in a drypoint of 1927 which bears the same title, though the view is slightly altered. It is one of the first works on canvas the young artist completed in his long and illustrious career. At this time, Hayter was beginning to associate himself with the embryonic surrealist group in Paris, centred arounf Breton, and the emergence of those ideas coupled with its particular style of imagery is evident in the present work. Adherence to a stricht topographical rubric is beginning to loosen up as the landscape gains a more dreamlike, or impossible, geography. Route à Bonifacio, 1927 is a fascinating transitional work that shows the young, ambitious artist experimenting with an artistic style that he would later master, devoting another 40 years or so to its continued exploration..

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