Discover Dorothea Tanning, the artist who pushed the boundaries of surrealism. Dorothea Tanning was an American surrealist artist whose career spanned over seven decades. Self-taught, her early paintings depict with precision dream-like scenes. Sunflowers, chess pieces, fabric, and doors, always slightly ajar, recur in her work. Dorothea says she ‘got fed up with the turpentine’ and in the 1960s began working with fabric, pioneering the use of soft sculptures. Towards the end of her career, Tanning experimented with colour and a more abstract painting style. These large ‘prismatic’ paintings remain figurative and retain dreamlike and fleshy qualities.