Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy was born in Paris France, the son of a retired navy captain. His father’s death in 1908 forced his mother to move and due to financial hardship, Yves ended up spending much of his youth living with various relatives. In 1918 he briefly joined the merchant navy before being drafted into the Army, where he befriended poet/writer Jacques Prévert. At the end of his military service in 1922, he returned to Paris where he worked various odd jobs and began sketching café scenes that were praised by fellow Parisian artists including Maurice de Vlaminck. In 1923 Tanguy, after seeing an exhibit featuring the work of the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico’s work, decided to dedicate his life to art and become a painter himself in spite of his complete lack of formal training.

Tanguy continued creating and exhibiting his work throughout the United States and Europe with the help of his dealer Pierre Matisse until January 1955 when Tanguy suffered a stroke at Woodbury, and died. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered by his friend Pierre Matisse on the beach at Douarnenez in his beloved Brittany. A retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York eight months after his death and his wife, who died in 1963, had her ashes placed on the same beach.