“The Surrealist cause, in art as in life, is the cause of freedom itself,” wrote André Breton in the catalogue for the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism. Organized by Breton and artist Marcel Duchamp in New York in 1942, it brought together a group of Surrealist artists who had fled Europe, including Masson, who had arrived in the United States in 1939. Meditation on an Oak Leaf was featured in the show and reflects Masson’s interest in bold color and organic abstraction. Masson favored automatism, a process in which the Surrealists believed that the subconscious guided an artist to produce a true form of free expression.

Gallery label from

522: Art of This Century, 2025

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The artist
Stephen C. Clark, New York. By 1947
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift, 1950

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The Museum of Modern Art
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Medium Tempera, pastel and sand on canvas
Dimensions 40 x 33" (101.6 x 83.8 cm)
Credit Given anonymously
Object number 84.1950
Department Painting & Sculpture

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