Figure on a Tightrope

William Baziotes American

Not on view

Baziotes embraced the Symbolist concept of "correspondences"—poetic analogies in which a single form can suggest multiple references. Also influenced by Pablo Picasso’s and Joan Miró’s Surrealist works, Baziotes painted semiabstract images with legible though ambiguous forms, like those in Figure on a Tightrope. In 1947, the year he made this painting, Baziotes explained his process, "Each beginning suggests something. Once I sense the suggestion, I begin to paint intuitively. The [intuitive] suggestion then becomes a phantom that must be caught and made real."

Figure on a Tightrope, William Baziotes (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1912–1963 New York), Oil on canvas

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