Dorothea Tanning Biography

Artist and writer Dorothea Tanning is most famous as the longest surviving surrealist artist and the longtime partner of artist Max Ernst.

Tanning headed to Chicago in 1930 right after college, trying to establish herself as a commercial artist and working odd jobs. 

She moved to New York in 1935 to better her chances as an artist, and a show at the Museum of Modern Art the next year exposed her to Dadaism and Surrealism and changed her life.

Tanning decided to study in Paris, but she arrived there just before Germany invaded France at the outset of World War II. She fled Europe as the war began and returned to the U.S.

Tanning met Max Ernst in 1942 when she showed her most famous painting, Birthday. Ernst and Tanning played chess, fell in love and ignored his wife until his marriage was officially over.

Ernst and Tanning married in 1946 in a joint ceremony with artist Man Ray and Juliet Browner, then settled down in Sedona, Arizona.

Their home in Arizona became a bit of an artists’ colony, and all the while Ernst tried to gain American citizenship. For several years they lived in France and the U.S., but after Ernst was denied U.S. citizenship the pair settled in Europe in the late 1950s.

After Ernst’s death in 1976, Tanning returned to the U.S. By this time, she was a well-known painter who’d moved on from surrealist paintings to textile art, costumes for choreographer George Balanchine and poetry.

Tanning’s most famous work often included images of feminine, distorted figures in dreamlike scenes as an exploration of the subconscious.