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This new biography repositions Jacqueline Lamba as one of the pioneers and finest exponents of Surrealist painting.
Jacqueline Lamba (1910-93) defied categorization. She is remembered only as the wife of André Breton, French poet, founder of Surrealism, but she was not just his spouse, she was a painter in her own right. A long overdue revaluation of her life and contribution to Surrealism has brought her out of the shadow into her rightful place.
After divorcing Breton, she was married for 14 years to American sculptor David Hare. Lamba's extraordinary life brought her into contact with many leading artists of the period: Leonora Carrington, Alberto Giacometti, Roberto Matta, Dora Maar, Yves Tanguy, Pablo Picasso, and Diego Rivera. And as Salomon Grimberg here reveals for the first time in previously unpublished letters, she had an affair with Frida Kahlo.
Thanks to exclusive interviews with people who knew her throughout her life, Grimberg uncovers Lamba's complex personality: often impossible to deal with, she had a habit of destroying those of her paintings with which she was not completely satisfied. But enough works survive to make an impressive oeuvre, and Grimberg interprets her painting with an authority that makes this biography essential reading for anyone interested, not just in feminism and Surrealism, but in the whole history of art in the twentieth century.
- Written by an art expert previously the author of celebrated works on Frida Kahlo.
- Repositions Jacqueline Lamba as 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.
- Salomon Grimberg lives in Texas.
"Jacqueline Lamba was a leading light of the Surrealist movement, but it has taken a century for her to receive credit that is her due. This landmark biography sets the record straight. It reveals her two worlds - external and internal - and the ways in which they both bolstered and inhibited her output. Jacqueline Lamba: The Forgotten Surrealist takes Lamba from the childhood loss of her father through her relationships with André Breton, David Hare, and Frida Kahlo to her final years in the south of France where she painted her most radiant works. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in Surrealism."
Katharine Conley, co-editor of the International Journal of Surrealism and author of Surrealist Ghostliness (2013)
"Fascinating! I've just finished reading a superb biography, so perfectly crafted that it rescues from the shadows the life of an artist forgotten and overlooked by historians. Salomon Grimberg has done an exhaustive job, extracting hundreds of pieces of information, like an archaeologist.
The author does not hide the darker aspects of Lamba's personality, but the entire text constitutes a profound reflection on the tremendous struggle of a woman to be considered an artist without ties, for her independence, her liberation, and, above all, for her dignity."
Josefina Alix, art historian and exhibition curator, author of Surrealism in Exile: The Beginning of the New York School (2000)