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Dimensions: 81 by 65cm., 31 7/8 by 25 5/8 in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Galerie Simon, Paris
Acquired by the present owner circa 1995
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Notes: Painted in 1923, Les fumeurs marks a new departure for Masson's art. His debt to André Derain, evident in the artist's paintings from previous years, is now overshadowed by a growing interest in exploration for new vocabulary and visual expression. His new compositions pay homage to Picasso and Braque and he adopts motifs associated with analytical Cubism. Picasso himself, impressed by Masson's striking canvases commented that he 'turned Cubism inside out' (quoted in 'Mouvement et métamorphose' in Le plaisir de peindre, Paris, October 1949, p. 169).
Discussing two similar paintings, Carolyn Lanchner explains that the 'compositions are laterally framed by the inclined figures at the outside edges, and space has become shallower [...] Although far more personalized than in Masson's later work, the heads of the participants in these nocturnal gatherings are heavily shaded, their individual identities blurred' (C. Lanchner, 'André Masson: Origins and Development' in André Masson (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976, p. 92). Conviviality was vitally important to Masson and his peers; here, the characters around the table have been identified as Limbour, Leiris, Fraenckel and Tual.
