Kurt Seligmann: First Message from the Spirit World of the Object

Although highly regarded by the critics and curators of his time, the Swiss-American Surrealist, Kurt Seligmann has largely been unheeded in the canon of art history. This monograph, the first English-language book dedicated to the artist, features extensive exploration and analysis of both Seligmann’s life and work. The art historians Stephan E. Hauser, Stephen Robeson Miller, and Martica Sawin contribute essays with an introduction by famed Columbia art historian, Meyer Schapiro. Kurt Seligmann was the first member of the Paris-based Surrealists to relocate to New York in the first months of World War II and was instrumental in helping to rescue many of his fellow artists and intellectuals from Occupied France, including the founder of Surrealism, Andre Breton. We follow the artist’s work as he moves from his friendship with Jean Arp and involvement with the Abstraction-Création group, to his induction as an official member of Breton’s Surrealist circle, to his exile in America and his influence on many of the up-and-coming New York School artists. His scholarly obsession with magic and extensive collection of occult books as well as his ethnographic interests and adventures are explored in detail. Interwoven with text are archival photos of the Surrealist artists, writers and poets, reproductions of the artist's works from the 1920s through the 1950s, and historical ephemera, in this rediscovery of an impactful artist and man in the history of modern art.