Practically everyone has heard of Salvador Dalí. For many, works of his like “The Persistence of Memory” (featuring Dalí’s iconic melting clocks) are the definition of Surrealism. But in reality, Surrealism spans far beyond Dalí. There are many other artists who deserve recognition for their important contributions to the movement. In particular, the contributions of non-male artists to Surrealism– and to the art world in general –are often forgotten, ignored or repressed. In an attempt to call attention to their oft-overlooked contributions, here are five non-male surrealists whose incredible artworks are a fascinating and important part of the Surrealist movement.
1. Remedios Varo
In large part, the works of Spanish-born painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963) went unnoticed during her lifetime, but over the course of the past few decades, her works have begun to attract more attention. In her childhood, Varo developed a fascination with magic and alchemy. She attended Catholic boarding school, which she disliked, and then art school, which was very uncommon for women of the period. Following her graduation, Varo began creating surrealist artworks. She was also an avid political activist, which resulted in her exile from Spain at the onset of the Spanish Civil War. Varo ended up fleeing to Mexico, where she would spend the rest of her life. Although somewhat isolated from the majority of her contemporaries, Varo remained in touch with some of her fellow surrealists, particularly Leonora Carrington, who is also featured in this article. Varo’s artworks often feature unique symbolism and have themes of magic, mysticism, mythology and solitude.
2. Leonora Carrington
A contemporary and close friend of Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) strongly opposed the idea that women were to serve as muses to male artists. “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse…I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist,” Carrington once said. Like Varo, Carrington resisted the constraint she faced at her Catholic boarding school, although she grew up in England, not Spain. In her childhood, Carrington adored fairy tales, inhaling books by Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, and Beatrix Potter. In her late teens, Carrington attended the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and was struck by the works of German surrealist Max Ernst among many others. She would meet Ernst in Paris the following year, and form a tight-knit circle of surrealist friends there. Carrington was not only a painter but a writer, composing the story “Down Below” following her emotional breakdown and visit to a psychiatric ward in the summer of 1940. Carrington would eventually join her friend Remedios Varo in Mexico, where she, too, remained until her death. Carrington’s paintings are recognizable by the strange, fantastical animals and other creatures that often inhabit them, likely inspired by beasts from the fairy tales, fables and books that Carrington was fascinated by from a young age.
- Dorothea Tanning
American surrealist Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) experimented with many artistic mediums throughout her career. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, writer, and poet. The daughter of Swedish immigrants, Tanning was an avid reader from her childhood, taking a job at her local library as a teenager. She moved to New York in the 1930s and began working as an illustrator, creating advertisements for Macy’s and other businesses. She met surrealist Max Ernst in 1942, after having admired his work– and the work of his contemporaries like Rene Magritte and Eileen Agar –for years prior. She and Ernst married in 1946. Tanning’s passion for the arts shone through in many ways: besides creating numerous paintings, poems, books and other artworks, she also dabbled in costume and set design, hosted the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Lee Miller and Dylan Thomas at her home in Sedona, Arizona, and established the Wallace Stevens Award for Poetry, which is to this day awarded to an American poet by the American Academy of Poets each year. Tanning lived to be 101 years old.
- Dora Maar
French-Serbian painter and photographer Dora Maar (1907-1997) is mainly remembered as being the muse for Pablo Picasso’s “Weeping Woman,” but she also created influential, radical artworks herself. Maar grew up moving back and forth between France and Argentina. She studied both painting and photography at art school, and soon made a name for herself as a photographer. Throughout her life, she went back and forth between painting and photography, and experimented with different techniques and styles in both mediums. As far as her photography, Maar was a street photographer, often photographing the blind, the homeless and mothers with their children on city streets, but also experimented with more abstract photography and photomontages/collage. Her relationship with Picasso, who she met in the mid-1930s, had a profound effect on both of their lives and artworks. While Maar served as Picasso’s muse for works like “Weeping Woman” and many others, she also influenced his work in a technical sense, educating him in photography and teaching him to use mediums such as the cliché verre technique, a complicated combination of photography and printmaking. Maar continued to create art up until her death at age 89.
- Claude Cahun
French photographer, sculptor and writer Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob (1894-1954) adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. In her personal writings, she referred to herself using she/her pronouns but identified as gender fluid. “Masculine? Feminine? Depends on the situation,” she wrote. In fact, Cahun was well known for her androgynous way of dressing, which challenged the strict gender-based fashion rules of her time. Cahun’s best-known works are her gender-ambiguous, mind bending photo self-portraits and the photo collages she made with her life-long partner Marcel Moore. Cahun never became a formal member of the French surrealist movement, but the mixture of dreams and everyday reality prominent in her works align strongly with the movement. She was also connected to the movement as an avid anti-facist. Cahun and Moore moved to the island of Jersey during World War II, distributing leaflets advocating for mutiny among the German soldiers stationed there. After the war, they spent the rest of their lives on the island.
These five incredibly influential artists are just a handful of the many, many artists who have contributed to the Surrealist movement (besides just Salvador Dalí). If you want to learn about more surrealist artists, or Surrealism in general, explore these articles:
10 Surrealist Artists Who Aren’t Salvador Dalí – Blog
