Kitchen-maids
- Artist: André Masson
- Date: 1962
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 502 × 610 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the "Kitchen-maids" by André Masson, created in 1962. In the 1920s Masson joined a group of surrealists who explored psychic automatism, letting unconscious impulses guide their hand. "Kitchen-maids" shows that process in full force. The canvas is covered in loose, almost calligraphic strokes that echo East‑Asian writing—Masson was deeply influenced by Chinese brushwork and even Thuluth script. You can see the piece’s all‑over quality, with no single focal point, as if the lines themselves were the subject. The work moves between abstraction and recognizable figures; the silhouettes hint at domestic workers, but the gestures feel more like an expressive, gestural poem. The painting’s rhythm feels like a calligram, recalling Masson’s bamboo‑pen ink drawings from the 1940s. It’s a compelling example of how subconscious creation can merge visual art and script into a single, dynamic language.
See it in person
Kitchen-maids is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
