There is No Finished World (Il n’y a pas de monde achevé), 1942, oil on canvas, and detail.
André Masson, 1896-1987, French. Baltimore Art Museum
The artist, a sometime Surrealist, fled France in 1941 with financial help from the Baltimore art collector, Saide A. May. His work had been classified as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis.
He painted this in 1942. He understood that he was living through a “disturbed moment in history.” It was his duty, he said, as an artist not to conceal this disturbance but to open it up, lay it out, explain it.
The artist returned to France after the war.