This week’s book competition prize is The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism by Whitney Chadwick (£24.95; Thames & Hudson). Click here to enter.
‘I didn’t have time to be anyone’s Muse … I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist’ Leonora Carrington
The Militant Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose educational, philosophical and literary backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions.
Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five intense, far-reaching female friendships among the surrealists to show how surrealism and the experiences of war, loss and trauma shaped individual women’s transitions from beloved muses to mature artists. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe’s subversive activities in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the frontline. The book draws on personal correspondence between the women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini following the imprisonment of Carrington’s lover Max Ernst, and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the 1930s during a difficult stay in Paris.
Answer the following question, by 12 pm on 13 July, to win a copy of The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism by Whitney Chadwick (£24.95; Thames & Hudson).
Q: Which surrealist artist designed a set for a ballet by George Balanchine and a perfume bottle for Elsa Schiaparelli?
For our last competition prize we offered Delacroix by Barthélémy Jobert (Princeton University Press). The question was:
Q: In which museum is Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People?
Answer: The Louvre
Congratulations to the winner, Maren Meier.
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