Beatrice perdue 1953

Wolfgang Paalen made this painting, Beatrice Perdue, at some point, using oil on canvas. The way these shapes swim into focus makes me think of a figure emerging out of a dream, or a memory coming back, bit by bit. There’s a tenderness in the palette - soft yellows, blues, and reds. You can almost feel Paalen coaxing this image into being, laying down colors, erasing lines, searching for the essence of the form. I like to imagine Paalen in his studio, surrounded by canvases, brushes in hand, wrestling with the push and pull of representation and abstraction. You can see a similar interest in the work of other surrealist painters like Remedios Varo, who also explored the intersection of the inner and outer worlds. The ongoing dialogue between artists across time and space, each one building on the discoveries and experiments of those who came before. It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?