Unica Zurn: Art, Writing and Post-War Surrealism

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1950s, writer and artist Unica Zurn produced a wealth of remarkable textual and visual material while in psychiatric institutions across Germany and France. While Zurn is often discussed in relation to her partner, the controversial artist Hans Bellmer, this innovative book moves beyond the familiar model of the overlooked ‘woman behind the man’ and re-introduces her as a member of the French Surrealist group.
In the first text on Unica Zurn in English, Esra Plumer presents Zurn’s life and work in light of the artist’s individual experiences of the Second World War, post-war Surrealism and mental illness, at the same time revealing wider aspects of her artistic practice in relation to her contemporaries. Plumer also reveals how the techniques of anagrams and automatism (writing and drawing methods designed to unlock the subconscious mind) form the pillars of Zurn’s artistic creative output, which carry her work into the wider theoretical circles of psychoanalytic theory and post-structuralist thought.