By 1927, two years after aligning himself with Andre Breton, Yves Tanguy began painting the dream-like landscapes that would establish him as a major figure within the Surrealist movement. The present example, painted in 1931, is a rare, if not unique, oil on glass painted uncharacteristically on its frontside rather than in the long-held Germanic tradition of hintermalerei, or ‘reverse’ painting on verso. Characteristic of Tanguy’s meticulously-drawn biomorphic forms set within what has come to be known as a ‘mindscape,’ Sans titre illustrates the formal commonalities he shares with Salvador Dalí. But unlike Dalí’s grotesque distortions and mutilations, Tanguy preferred to ‘veil’ the figure by shifting from a literal outline to an abstracted one that was suggested but radically simplified and abstracted. Staged against a deep foreground with a plain and ambiguous horizon, this Sans titre embraces ethereality with the presence of objects floating upwards as if metaphors for dreams arising in the unconscious.