1177 - Robert Tatin, Composition in Red and Black, symbolic imagery with faces and sun signs

Robert Tatin, Composition in Red and Black, symbolic imagery with faces and sun signs (1902 Laval – 1983 Cossé-le-Vivien), colour lithograph on “BFK Rives” paper, signed lower right, numbered lower left 43/75, dense, symbolic pictorial language in red and black, figurative elements, mythical signs and architectural structures combine into an ornamental whole, on the left a banderole “Terre du Sud”, right of centre a circular motif with musicians, good condition commensurate with age, slightly stained, corners slightly creased, image 41.5x54.5 cm (HxW), overall size 50.5x66 cm (HxW) Robert Tatin was born in Laval in 1902, trained first as a decorative painter, then as a carpenter, and in 1933 was received in Tours into the Compagnons charpentiers du Devoir de Liberté. After the Second World War he moved in Paris in the circle around Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Jean Dubuffet. From 1950 he travelled South America for about five years, worked with ceramics in Brazil and in 1951 received a first prize at the São Paulo Biennale. In 1962 he settled in Cossé-le-Vivien in the Mayenne and, together with his wife Lise Tatin, built there a monumental coloured sculpture complex, which opened in 1969 as the Musée Robert Tatin. Tatin worked as a ceramicist, painter, lithographer, sculptor and architect and rejected affiliation with any art movement; critics place his work close to naïve art, Surrealism and Art Brut.