Kay Sage

Kay Sage (1898-1963)

Kay Sage was born in Albany, New York, the second daughter of Henry Manning Sage, a New York state senator. Sage spent most of her early years in Italy with her mother, returning to the United States in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. She attended various prestigious secondary schools and later took classes at the Corcoran Art School in Washington, D.C.

At the end of the war, Sage returned to Italy and studied art at the Scuola Libera delle Belle Arti in Rome. While there, she met and married Prince Ranieri di San Faustino. The marriage lasted ten years; the idle life of an Italian society woman did not suit Sage, and she divorced her prince in 1935. A year later, she had her first solo exhibition, in Milan.

On a visit to Paris in 1937-39, Sage became intrigued by the Surrealist movement and began to paint in that manner, though the theoretical aspects of Surrealism never captured her interest. In 1939 she met Yves Tanguy, one of the leading members of the Surrealists. By that time, however, the political climate in Europe was driving many artists and intellectuals abroad. Sage left for New York and was joined by Tanguy later that year. They were married in 1940 and, after traveling through the Southwest, settled in Woodbury, Connecticut. Sage began a period of concentrated painting and exhibiting. She had her first American exhibition in 1940, at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, and was included in an international Surrealist exhibition in New York in 1942 at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion. Sponsored by the Council of French Relief Societies, it was the largest Surrealist show mounted in the United States to date. Although their works were often compared and were even shown jointly in 1954 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, Sage and Tanguy insisted on exhibiting separately and on maintaining separate studios and artistic identities. After Tanguy's death in 1955, Sage became increasingly reclusive. Deteriorating eyesight led her to stop painting in 1958. After a long period of depression, she committed suicide in 1963.

Unusual Thursday, 1951

Oil on canvas, 31 ¾ x 38 3/4 in. (80.7 x 98.4 cm)

Signed (lower right): Kay Sage ’51

Gift of Mrs. Naum Gabo (1978.90)

Skeletal structures, such as the one in “Unusual Thursday”, often partially wrapped or shrouded and placed in somber landscapes, became the dominant motif in Sage's work beginning in the mid-1940s. She admired the proto-Surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, and her architectural constructions have a brooding and sinister quality that recalls his empty piazzas. Yet her light, unlike de Chirico's characteristically harsh glare, is muted. Her canvases suggest a deserted stretch of land or an extraterrestrial realm, neither a ruin nor an inhabited world.

Calling these structures "the pavilions of dreaming," James Thrall Soby observed: "They stand in boundless space. They are uninhabited except for shadows wherein, it might be, nightbirds perch invisible, tightening their balance, mistrusting the outer light. . . . Around this enchanted architecture an arid landscape follows a curious geometry, toward infinity and luminous skies."(1) By giving his own unique interpretation of Sage's spare landscapes, Soby illustrates what is required of the viewer: one needs to add one's own interpretation to the framework Sage provides.

The scaffolding theme on which Sage focused throughout the remainder of her career first appeared in 1946. The structure is used to evoke the sense of simultaneous construction and deconstruction, of creation and decay. It later took the form of bridges, cages, and towers, but during the late 1940s it remained a component shattered or in skeleton form.

The Surrealists frequently depicted desolate wasteland settings, such as that in “Unusual Thursday”, yet Sage explained that the scaffolding imagery had its basis in a recurring dream she had while living in Rome. Her home was near the Palazzo del Quirinale, which was undergoing restoration at the time. In the dream, the scaffolding covering the façade of the building was burning and she rushed to the window, only to see the empty and desolate square.(2) It is not only the scaffolding but also her feelings of desolation that she has recreated on canvas.

Sage described her method of working: "I suppose I start with some sort of composition. I see it in a way in advance, but very often it changes as I go along. I do know that while I'm painting I feel as though I were living in the place."(3) When contemplating “Unusual Thursday”, the viewer must inhabit the place as well.

KK

Bibliography:

Julian Levy, "Tanguy, Connecticut, Sage," “Art News” 53 (September 1954): 24-27; Kay Sage, “China Eggs,” unpub. ms.,1955 private collection (microfilm, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 685); Stephen R. Miller, "The Surrealist Imagery of Kay Sage," “Art International” 26 (September-October 1983): 32-47, 54-56; Whitney Chadwick, “Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement” (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985); Judith D. Suther, “A House of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist” (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997)p. 142.

NOTES:

1. James Thrall Soby, “Kay Sage Retrospective”, exhib. cat. (New York: Catherine Viviano Gallery, 1960), n.p.

2. Sage, “China Eggs,” p. 107.

3. Kay Sage, “Serene Surrealist,” “Time 55” (March 13, 1950): 49.