Lot 69: Sam Haile (1909-1948)

Non Payment of Taxes, Congo, Christian Era
signed and dated 'Haile i. 37' (lower left), signed again and inscribed '"Non-payment of taxes, Congo, Christian era."/Samuel Haile/52 British Grove W4' (on a label attached to the reverse)
oil on canvas
30 x 20 1/4 in. (76.2 x 51.4 cm.)

London, Mayor Gallery, British Surrealism Fifty Years On, March - April 1986, no. 50.
London, Birch & Conran, Sam Haile, October - November 1987, no. 3. Leeds, City Art Galleries, Angels of anarchy and machines for making clouds: Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties, October - December 1986, no. 190.
Milan, Palazzo Reale, I Surrealisti, May - September 1989, not numbered.
Aldeburgh, Peter Pears Gallery, Festival Exhibition, June 2006, no. 22.

Exhibition catalogue, British Surrealism Fifty Years On, London, Mayor Gallery, March - April 1986, no. 50, p. 39, illustrated. Exhibition catalogue, Sam Haile, London, Birch & Conran, October - November 1987, no. 3, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Angels of anarchy and machines for making clouds: Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties, Leeds, City Art Galleries, 1986, no. 190, p. 187, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, I Surrealisti, Milan, Palazzo Reale, May - September 1989, p.467, illustrated.

Mrs Marianne Haile.
with Birch & Conran, London.

Actively surrealist from 1937 to 1939, a staunch anti-imperialist and pacifist who emigrated to the U.S. at the outbreak of, and for the duration of, the war, Haile always resisted values imposed on him by such abstract entities as Flag, Fatherland and even Freedom, and refused to 'serve an end which cannot be reconciled with poetic truth'. It is this poetic truth which inspired this picture, in whose title the three targets of his violent commitment against the powers that be, are obviously pointed out: the oppression of the State, Colonialist exploitation and Christianity. The flattened faces, the pressed lips, looking like open bleeding scars, and the organic dislocation at work everywhere, form a helpless, agonizing body screaming to the sky. Congo is now known to have been one of the worst cases of barbaric exploitation directly and personally organized by King Leopold II of Belgium.

M.R.

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