Retrouvailles des Epouxs - Pl. XII from the "L'Odyssee" portfolio

Andre Masson

Retrouvailles des Époux is the final plate in the L’Odyssée twelve image portfolio by Andre Masson and depicts the final scene of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus has returned to Ithaca after his twenty-year absence but is unrecognized by his wife Penelope. Uncertain who is before her, she quickly dispatches a command to her maid to move a bed, a request that only Odysseus would know to be impossible. Penelope realizes that the stranger before her is husband and she embraces him and weeps.

The "L'Odysee" portfolio of twelve images was published by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and printed by the artist and Atelier Crommelnyck in an edition of 120 plus 20 artist's proofs.

Andre Masson moved to Paris in 1912 to study at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. While in Paris, he became interested in mythological-themed paintings of Nicolas Poussin, subjects that he would later investigate in his own work. In 1915 he joined the French infantry and fought in the battles of the Somme. He was seriously wounded during a battle in 1917 and spent months in the hospital recovering physically and psychologically. The war influenced Masson’s art and he later wrote, “The field of battle made a human being of me. It literally threw me into the humus humain.”

In 1919, he moved to the south of France for a few years before returning to Paris. There he participated in the Surrealist movement between 1924 and 1929 and became a leading practitioner of automatism. Under the German occupation of France during World War II, Masson’s work was declared degenerate. He fled France eventually taking refuge in United States, first living in New York before moving to rural Connecticut in 1941. It was during this time that he worked at Stanley William Hayter’s experimental workshop Atelier 17 at the New School in New York.

Masson returned to France in 1945 and settled in Aix-en-Provence in 1947. He was awarded the Grand Prix National des Art in 1954 and, in 1958, the Venice Biennale dedicated an entire room to his work. As early as 1933 he produced designs for the stage and, in 1965, he was invited to paint the ceiling of the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris.

Andre Masson died on 28 October 28 1987 in Aix-en-Provence, France.