Betrayal of the Mind

A rare English-language work tracing the life and fate of noted surrealist Unica Zuern.

ZURN, UNICA [zyrn ynika]. f. n. - b. 1916; in Berlin-Grunewald - 1. Born to a middleclass family, a young woman in Hitler's Germany. 2. Worked at Universum Film AG as a creator and screenwriter of commercial. - 3. Artist who belong to the Surrealist movement; was Hans Bellmer's partner. - 4. Schizophrenic. 5. Crazy woman. -Antonym. Body, organism.

A childhood devastated by rape, the absence of an idealized father, a strict moral mother, and a passion for art shaped Unica Zuern. One of the only prominent female figures of the Surrealist movement, Zuern was tormented by inner demons that she shared through her automatic drawings and anagram poems. She longed for and rejected intimacy at once, seeking her so-called Man of Jasmine, an idealized male figure, throughout her life while living as the partner of Hans Bellmer, noted artist and photographer. As her schizophrenia began to overtake her, she longed to make the woman she once was disappear into the nameless pronoun She. In they eyes of Unica Zuern, madness is the only way to be in the world.

Celine Wagner retraces the fate of Unica Zuern in this rare English-language portrait of the surrealist. Includes a number of reproductions of Zuern's work.

For Mature Readers.