The Joyous Leaping Of Uncanned Salmon

Dr. Seuss was living and working in New York City as an editorial cartoonist in the 1930s when Surrealism crashed onto the art scene in the United States.
Being a part of that explosive time had a profound impact on Ted’s artistic ideas and development.
His fascination with both the Surrealist and Dada movements becomes ingeniously clear in wry artworks such as The Joyous Leaping of Uncanned Salmon, Fooling Nobody, and I Dreamed I Was the Doorman at the Hotel Del Coronado.
As is the case with many of his paintings,Ted Geisel’s titles provide a gateway to the logistical insanity of his creative imagination. In this piece, he serves up punchy color set against a geometric platform where paisley-styled “salmon” jump for joy. Seuss purposefully asks questions that he intends the viewers to answer for themselves such as, “Are these Salmon having a final celebration before their journey to the cannery, or have they completely escaped this unsavory predicament?”

For over 60 years, Dr. Seuss’s illustrations brought a visual realization to his fantastic and imaginary worlds. However, his artistic talent went far beyond the printed page, as in his Secret Art works – the paintings and sculptures he did at night for himself that he rarely exhibited during his lifetime. Seuss always dreamed of sharing these works with his fans and had entrusted his wife, Audrey, to carry out his wishes once he was gone. Audrey, too, believed the work deserved further recognition and that Ted himself would one day be evaluated not only as an author, but also as an artist in his own right.