Forgotten Surrealist

If Jacqueline Lamba (1910-93) is known at all, it is as the wife (and sometime muse) of André Breton. At least, that has been regrettably the case until recently, when long overdue revaluation has brought her out of the shadow of her ex-husband and into her rightful position as one of the pioneers and finest exponents of Surrealist painting. This biography charts the roller-coaster course of her personal life - her lovers included American sculptor David Hare, and there is speculation about the intensity of her relationship with Frida Kahlo; she knew and worked with Claude Cahun, Marianne Clouzot and Pablo Picasso. But this biography concerns itself primarily with Lamba's real lifelong preoccupation: painting, the act of which alwasy trumped her desire and capacity to promote herself. Her works were exhibited at all the major Surrealist exhibitions of the 1930s, but her name appeared on none of her canvases. This was to some extent the zeitgeist: women were regarded as appendages of their 'better halfs', but even within that context self-advancement was notably not one of Lamba's skills. But she also had the habit of destroying those of her paintings with which she wasn't completely happy, and her perfectionism ensured that there are plenty of them. But enough works survive to make an impressive oeuvre, and Salomon Grimberg contextualizes and interprets them with an authority and a brio that will makeThe Forgotten Surrealistessential reading for feminists and art lovers everwhere. Written by an art expert previously the author of celebrated works on Frida Kahlo. Repositions Lamba a leading light of 20th-century art rather than a footnote to it. Plate section features numerous high-quality images of Lamba's finest extant works as well as photographs of Lamba with Breton, Dora Maar, Picasso and others.