I Have No Shadow, 1940 (oil on canvas)

Sage was a wealthy American expatriate who had received conventional art training in Rome as a young woman in the early 1920s. After visiting the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, she began painting desolate, architectural forms heavily influenced by Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico’s enigmatic scenes. Her work was admired and she quickly integrated into the surrealist group in Paris. Sage uses a stark perspective and looming shadows to entice the viewer into an otherworldly realm. Sage returned to the United States in 1939, on the brink of WWII. During the war, she helped several French surrealists leave Europe and find gallery representation in New York, advocating especially for Yves Tanguy, whom she married in 1940—the year this painting was created.