Surrealist women artists and mental illness

by Jenny Anger (Editor)

Overview

Female mental illness has been a prominent and complicated theme in surrealist cultural traditions, including the idealization of women with mental illness in works such as André Breton’s Nadja (1928). Art historians have examined this tendency before, but to date there has been no comprehensive study of the lived reality of women surrealist artists with mental illness. How did women’s experience and their work intersect with this romanticized vision? Was the masculine dream of feminized, “mad” genius prohibitive or productive for these women artists? After establishing the ideological field within which these women worked, the book turns to case studies of well-known and some lesser-known artists, including Ángeles Santos, Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Claude Cahun, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Sonja Sekula, and Unica Zürn. This collection of essays contains a wide range of responses, revealing surrealism’s generative as well as restrictive force.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526180704
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	03/24/2026
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jenny Anger is Professor of Art History at Grinnell College, Iowa

Table of Contents

Preface – Katharine Conley
Introduction – Jenny Anger

Part I: Framing mental illness
1 s/M: Nadja – Abigail Susik
2 To the edge of madness: The Immaculate Conception – Effie Rentzou

Part II: Transitions
3 “My stomach was the mirror of the earth”: an ecofeminist reading of Leonora Carrington’s memoir of illness, Down Below – Alessia Zinnari
4 Artistry through emotional anguish: Ángeles Santos and her painting– Irene Barreno García and Carmen Gaitán Salinas

Part III: Gender play
5 Meret Oppenheim: from the rule of men to the crisis of women – Lee Colón
6 Frida Kahlo: surrealism, suffering, and the female experience – Brittney Romagna
7 Claude Cahun as anachronism – Christy Wampole

Part IV: Living with psychosis
8 Sonja Sekula: surrealism and schizophrenia – Jenny Anger
9 Rethinking narratives of illness in Unica Zürn’s Oeuvre and Reception – Esra Plümer Bardak
10 Zoobiologie: gender and psychic suffering in Unica Zürn’s human-animal drawings – Arantxa Romero González

Epilogue: Problematic mentalities: these surrealist women artists – Mary Ann Caws

Editorial Reviews

'It is encouraging to finally see a serious study on women Surrealist artists and mental health and illness, an intersection overdue for scholarly exploration. A triumph and an absolute necessity'
Amanda Cachia, University of Houston

From the Publisher