Kay Sage’s “Composizione bianca e grigio-verde” is an exceptionally rare abstract work by the celebrated Surrealist master. This work is one of only eight known examples of Sage’s abstract works, and one of only three existing ones, according to a recent catalogue raisonné with a chronology by Stephen Robeson Miller. This work is arguably the earliest existing "modern" work that she painted in Italy prior to moving to Paris in 1937 where, as recorded in art historical canon, she joined the inner circle of the Surrealists and met Yves Tanguy.

This work was also one of six abstractions exhibited in her first public show in 1936 at Galleria del Milione in Milan with the German artist Heinz Henghes, whom she met through Ezra Pound in Italy (Sage was a budding poet during this time and Pound took an interest in her poetry). This 1936 exhibition was her first foray into an independent life as an artist upon divorcing her aristocratic Italian husband after ten years of marriage. At the time of this painting, she decided to pursue a career as a serious artist, and even signed this painting as “KS,” instead of “KSF,” signaling her new self-determination. This work, therefore, is significant not only for its rarity but also because it represented a turning point in Sage’s life, a metamorphosis into an autonomous, serious artist, and an important chapter of the story of women artists during this period. Two other abstract paintings by Sage are currently in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and the Mattatuck Museum.

“Composizione bianca e grigio-verde” (also known as “Composition in White and Grey-Green” or “Untitled (Abstraction)”) provides vital insight into how Sage’s practice evolved over time, and how her rare abstract works, such as this one, forms the bridge to her later Surrealist works. The furls and draperies that characterize her later Surrealist works are already beginning to show in her early abstract works like this one. The work’s palette of muted colors, moreover, anticipates some of her later Surrealist paintings, and incorporates geometric and curved forms that speak to a composite of various avant-garde styles of the early twentieth century.

Born into an affluent family that made its fortune in lumber and land, Kay Sage (1898-1963) spent most of her youth in Italy. From 1925 to 1935 she was married to the Italian prince Ranieri di San Faustino. Having been introduced to Surrealism after meeting Kurt Seligmann in 1936, Sage divorced Faustino and in 1937 moved to Paris. There she met the Surrealist artist Yves Tanguy and Giorgio de Chirico and became staunchly devoted to Surrealist aesthetics. By 1938 after having met Andre Breton, Sage herself became a key figure of the Surrealist circle and hosted many Surrealist gatherings at her Paris apartment. Situated squarely in the zeitgeist of this creative environment, Sage herself went on to produce a body of archetypal Surrealist imagery that reflected the energy and cerebral nature of Surrealism.

Prompted by the war, Sage relocated to the United States in 1940. She had her first solo show in New York that year and married her colleague and friend Tanguy (1900-1955). In 1941, the two artists settled in Woodbury Connecticut, an area that would later attract other Surrealist artists. After the declaration of war, Sage began organizing along with the French Minister of Education in New York, exhibitions from which proceeds were allocated to helping French artists in crisis back in France. She later became instrumental in establishing the Society for the Preservation of European Culture, which aided in bringing works by Tanguy, Matta and Gordon Onslow Ford to New York.

Beyond her efforts to support and promote the work of her colleagues, Sage herself was steadfast in her commitment to her own art. Her Surrealist investigations were drawn from personal experience and everyday imagery. Her austere works were executed in draftsman-like style and rendered in muted colors. They are often punctuated with unsettling paradoxes and typically incorporate empty landscapes and ambiguous structures. Like many of her contemporaries, Sage delighted in manipulating the ordinary and indulged in wild alterations of scale, subject matter and narrative. She is known to have fused dreamscape imagery with non-naturalistic juxtapositions, the unconscious and the absurd. Sage herself often incorporated draped objects and figures into her imagery, which challenged the natural order of things. The world in narrative became unraveled, re-conceived and re-imagined. The very concept of creative freedom became an almost primal right to Sage.

Sage's life, like her art, was punctuated by a driving intensity and deep curiosity. Destroyed after Tanguy’s sudden death of a cerebral brain hemorrhage in 1955, Sage began to lose her vision in 1958 and ceased painting. Following a failed attempt at suicide with pills in 1959, she shot herself in the heart in 1963. Her last years were devoted to ensuring Tanguy’s place in the pantheon of twentieth-century Surrealist artists, at the expense of her own reputation and legacy, which she did not find worth cultivating. Since her death, this scholarly neglect has begun to be repaired and she is now known as a prominent, central figure of Surrealism.

Sage’s work is held in numerous public institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Centre Pompidou; Princeton University Art Museum; among many others.