Betrayal of the Mind: The Surreal Life of Unica Zürn

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

ZÛRN, UNICA [zyrn ynika]. f. n. - b. 1916; in Berlin-Grunewald - 1. Born to a middleclass family, a young woman in Hiter’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 Zürn. One of the only prominent female figures of the Surrealist movement, Zürn 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 Zürn, madness is the only way to be in the world.

Céline Wagner retraces the fate of Unica Zürn in this rare English-language portrait of the surrealist. Includes a number of reproductions of Zürn’s work.

For Mature Readers.