Surrealist women artists and mental illness
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'genius' and 'madness'
Andre Breton
Angeles Santos
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Claude Cahun
Disability Studies
Dora Maar
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female mental illness
fetishization of mental illness
Frida Kahlo
Leonora Carrington
lived experience of mental illness
Mad Studies
Meret Oppenheim
problematic art histories
psychosis and art
romanticising mental illness
schizophrenia and art
Sonja Sekula
Unica Zurn
women artists
women surrealists'
Product details
- ISBN 9781526180704
- Weight: 737g
- Dimensions: 170 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 07 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Jenny Anger is Professor of Art History at Grinnell College, Iowa
