Penelope Rosemont - Surrealist Women

Naturally my greatest debt is to the surrealist women whose writings and artwork make up this book, and most especially to those whothrough correspondence and discussiongraciously provided me with information regarding their own and other womens participation in the Surrealist Movement: Eileen Agar, Hilary Booth, Elisa Breton, Emmy Bridgwater, Carmen Bruna, Leonora Carrington, Susanna Coggeshall (Susy Hare), Jayne Cortez, Rikki Ducornet, Aube Ellout, Nicole Espagnol, Anne Ethuin, Alice Farley, Silvia Grnier, Marianne van Hirtum, Nelly Kaplan, Elisabeth Lenk, Mary Low, Joyce Mansour, Alena Ndvornkov, Ivanir de Oliveira, Mimi Parent, Elaine Parra, Nancy Joyce Peters, Katerina Piosov, Nicole E. Reiss, Thrse Renaud, Franoise Sullivan, Eva Svankmajerov, Toyen, Marie Wilson, and Haifa Zangana.

What I owe to Andr Breton can hardly be summed up in a few words, but I hope my gratitude will be evident throughout this book. His inspiration and thoughtful encouragement were decisive factors in shaping my life.

Special thanks to Rikki Ducornet, Guy Flandre, Edouard Jaguer, Mary Low, Michael Lwy, Conroy Maddox, Nancy Joyce Peters, Katerina Piosov, Myrna Bell Rochester and my husband, Franklin Rosemont, all of whom supplied me with so much information and helped in so many other ways that they could almost be considered coeditors of this anthology.

Thanks to Richard Anders and Heribert Becker, for information on surrealism in Germany; Elisa Breton, for information on the contents of Nadjas letters in her possession; Carmen Bruna, for background on surrealism in Argentina; Leonora Carrington, for her recollections of Jacqueline Lamba and Remedios Varo; Eugenio Castro, J. F. Aranda, and Luis Garcia-Abrines, for material on surrealism in Spain; Her de Vries, for his biographical sketch of Gertrude Pape; Elie-Charles Flamand, Edouard Jaguer, Grard Legrand, and Michel Zimbacca, for their recollections of Jacqueline Senard and the proposed journal, La Mante surraliste, in the early 1950s; Guy Flandre, for details on Elisa Breton, Marianne van Hirtum, and Toyen; David Gascoyne, for sharing his memories of Sheila Legge; Enrique Gomez-Correa, for information on the history of surrealism in Chile; Bruno Jacobs, for details on surrealism past and present in Sweden; Edouard Jaguer, for data on Anneliese Hager, Vera Hrold, Maruja Mallo, Jeanne Megnen, Drahomira Vandas, Hlne Vanel, and many others; Ted Joans, for interesting anecdotes about Elisa Breton and Joyce Mansour; Abdul Kader El Janabi, for data on Ikbal El Alailly and surrealism in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world; Susanna Coggeshall, Gerome Kamrowski, Philip Lamantia, and Clarence John Laughlin, for their recollections of surrealism in New York in the 1940s; Edith Smith, for her reminiscences of surrealist activity in Paris in 19481949; Sergio Lima, for details of the history of surrealism in Brazil (especially on Leila Ferraz and Maria Martins) and elsewhere in South America; Mary Low, for her reminiscences of Marcelle Ferry; Conroy Maddox, for a mass of information on surrealism in England from the 1930s on; Isabel Meyrellcs, Mario Cesariny, and Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, for information on surrealism in Portugal; Pierre Naville, for his recollections of Rene Gauthier and of surrealist interest in jazz in the 1920s; Henri Pastoureau, for data on Fanny Beznos, Vera Hrold, Simone Yoyotte and the Lgitime Dfense group, and Hlne Vanel; Katerina Piosov, for information on women in surrealism in the Czech Republic; Antonia Rasicovici, for her letters on women in surrealism in Romania in the 1930s and 40s; Thrse Renaud and Franoise Sullivan, for information on the automatist movement of Montreal; Grard Rosenthal, for his recollections of Rene Gauthier; Andr Thirion, for responding at length to my queries about Simone Kahn, Denise Lvy, and Yolande Oliviero, Nanos Valaoritis, for details on surrealism in Greece; and Marie Wilson, for her reminiscences of Elisa Breton and surrealism in Paris in the early 1950s.

I am deeply grateful to Jayne Cortez, Guy Ducornet, Rikki Ducornet, Paul Garon, Michael Lwy, Nancy Joyce Peters, Myrna Bell Rochester, and my husband Franklin, for reading and commenting on various drafts of the introductions.

Several historians and other scholars generously made their work-in-progress available to me. Thanks to Nancy Deffebach, for sharing her important research on Alice Rahon; Hugh Ford, for information on Nancy Cunard; Daniel Gurin, for his reminiscences of Simone Kahn Collinet; Libby Ginway, for details on Elsie Houston; Rene Riese Hubert, for details on Valentine Penrose, Alice Rahon and others; Michel Remy, for information on surrealism in England in the 1930s and 40s; Myrna Bell Rochester, for sending helpful articles and bibliographies, and for interviewing Dominique Desanti about her early interest in surrealism; Marie-Agns Souneau, for details on Suzanne Csaire and Lucie Thse; Michael Stone-Richards, for documents on the early history of surrealism in Czechoslovakia; and Dale Tomich, for data on the Lgitime Defense and LEtudiant noir groups in 1930s Paris, and on the 1940s Tropiques group in Martinique.

Toyen, At a Certain Hour, oil with collage, 1963. Photograph by J. Hyde, Paris. Courtesy of M. Guy Flandre and Maitre Louis Labadie.

Thanks also to Russell Maylone, Special Collections, Northwestern University Library; Christine Crowther, The Swiss Institute, New York; Eumie Imm Stroukoff, The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; Cathy Henderson, Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas at Austin; Carey E. McDougall, Mattatuck Museum in Woodbury, Connecticut; and to the staffs of the Ryerson Library, The Art Institute of Chicago (which houses the important Mary Reynolds Collection), the Chicago Public Library, the University of Illinois Library in Urbana, and the Columbia University Oral History Project in New York.

To all the translators whose efforts appear in these pages, and especially those who did work specifically for this anthologyCisela Baumhauer, Rachel Blackwell, Her de Vries, Guy Ducornet. Rikki Ducornet, Erin Gibson, Walter Gruen, Miriam Hansen, Natalie Kenvin, Nicole Knight, Jean R. Longland, Katerina Piosov, Myrna Bell Rochester, Franklin Rosemont, Eloise Ryder, and Greta Wenzigermy warmest appreciation.

Many others contributed to this book in various ways, by facilitating communication with authors or their estates, passing on bits of information, answering questions, checking facts, and other acts of kindness. I am grateful to all of them. They include Gertrude Abercrombie, Branko Aleksi, Paul De Angelis, Enrico Bai, Mary Beach. Robert Benayoun, Jean Benoit, Rita Bischof, Vane Bor, Micheline and Vincent Bounoure, Paul and Mari Jo Buhle, Nicolas Calas, Jean-Claude Charbonel, Vv Clark, Tristan DcHarme. M. G. Devise, Eva Effenbergerov, Marcel Fliess (Galerie 19002000), Charles Henri Ford, Mrs. Simon Fraser, Laura Fronty, Paul and Beth Garon, Virginia Goldstein, Mel Gooding, Giovanna and Jean-Michel Goutier, Amparo and E. F. Granell, Walter Gruen, Jean-Pierre Guillon, Tom Gutt, Miriam Hansen, Jeremy Jenkinson, Alain Joubert, Konrad Klapheck, Djordje Kostt, Geoffrey Lawson, Dick Leutscher, Jean-Luc Majouret, Man Ray, Samir Mansour, Herbert Marcuse, Floriano Martins. Fabrice Maze George Melly, John S. Monagan, Lygia and Gellu Naum, Guillermo de Osma, Euzhan Palecy, Antony Penrose, Dominique Rabourdin, David R. Roediger, Sylvie Sator, Georges Sebbag, Natalia Fernndez Segarra, Louise Simons, Catherine Vasseur, Veronica Volkow, Susan Ware, ruth weiss, Pablo Weisz-Carrington, and Francis Wright.

At various stages of this project, indispensable technical assistance was provided by Paul Garon, Lisa Oppenheim, Constance Rosemont, Sally Kaye Rosemont, and Joel Williams: