Félix Labisse, a self-taught painter of Belgian origin, settled in Paris in 1935. Attracted by secular culture, magic and esotericism, he populated his pictorial universe with hybrid beings from which sexes, branches or antennae emerge, in settings of icy luminosity. In 1962, he began the Libidoscaphes series, which he described as complex and sexualised marine forms. This work depicts extravagant black forms, sailing in a row in a barren landscape that seems to belong to another planet. The deep blue sky with its white halo enhances the eerie and disturbing nature of the ensemble.

Joseph Sima, of Czech origin, moved to Paris in 1921, where he became friends with many poets, with whom he shared the same sensitivity to sensory and spiritual experiences. In 1924, on a stormy night, he was struck by the sight of a lightning bolt illuminating a dead chestnut tree. From that moment on, he produced drawings and paintings on the theme of the double landscape and the relationship between matter and light. In this repeated scene, in which life and death coexist, the geometric blocks and blue halos seem to come from an unknown space and time.

In 1922, André Masson undertook a series of woodland scenes inspired by his excursions to the outskirts of Paris. At the foot of the trees, geometric elements immerse the landscape in an atmosphere of uncanniness. Filled with latent and unconscious meaning, they evoke tombs, describe mysterious enclosed spaces or form symbolic figures. The initial title of the work, Allée des tombes [Avenue of Graves], links the scene directly to the artist’s trauma during the First World War (1914-1918). Both a refuge for the imagination and a labyrinth, this forest exudes a sense of sinister menace.