Yves Tanguy’s 1942 painting, Indefinite Divisibility, is an oil based piece that explores a beach landscape in an abstract manner. This non-representational work evokes emotion through colors, shapes and textures to engage the viewer’s imagination. As a surrealist artist he incorporated many common objects to form his idea including what appears like boat oars, waves of a shoreline, or items seen on a beach.
The use of the ethereal scene gives a dream-like atmosphere to the painting and encourages viewers to think freely with details such as its sinister light tones, grand steps accumulating and creating shapes that are left for interpretation.This painting serves as an example of Tanguy’s unique style of surrealism as he used unexpected objects from our everyday life and included them in his artwork.
Yves Tanguy’s Indefinite Divisibility stands out from other works of Art during this time period in terms of emotion and detail. Similarly, Leon Spilliaert’s 1908 Vertigo, Magic Staircase also captures the essence of surrealism by creating an unusual landscape composed of lithograph prints to distort reality quite poetically.
