5 Female Surrealist Artists That Aren’t Frida Kahlo

Art Lovers | 22 January 2022

Written by Amelia Pontifex

What is Surrealism? And why are there so few known female Surrealist artists?

Surrealism was one of the most influential artistic and cultural movements of the 20th century. The term denotes an experimental and playful style that often incorporates an absence of control, of logic and reason and is usually created with the aim of provoking conversations on society, culture and politics as well as reflecting subconscious and innermost desires and fears.

Surrealism originally emerged after the First World War in Paris in the early 1920’s. Revolutionary ideas sparked in psychology, the unconscious mind and political and social movements fuelled Surrealism into the 1930’s and 40’s. Based on a new mode of writing called “automatic writing”, which sought to promote writing of the imagination and subconscious and free writers from reason and societal limitations, Surrealism was officially consecrated in the ‘Surrealism Manifesto’ of 1924.

Inspired by ‘automatic writing’ or ‘automatism’ as it was also named, and the hidden world of the subconscious, artists Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Man Ray, Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali all played integral roles in making Surrealism a legitimate artistic movement with their unpredictable, bizarre, nonsensical and imaginative works.

Surrealism was often seen as painting the landscape of the subconscious and often rejected traditional masculine artistic structures. Many female artists saw Surrealism as a tool to reclaim their experiences and enjoy artistic freedom by acting as their own muse. Feminist art historian Whitney Chadwick has most famously noted that Surrealism’s legacy today is “a model for creative practices that encouraged many women to adapt its principles in their search to link artistic self-identity to the realities of gender and female sexuality.” Due to this female reclamation of traditional male artistic practice and the self-reflective nature of exploring one’s subconscious, many artists, art historians and academics since the 1940’s have noted that Surrealism is intrinsically a feminine movement and style.

Leonora Carrington. Green Tea. 1942 | MoMA

So why have so few female Surrealist artists been remembered?

Frida Kahlo is noted as the most famous Surrealist artist of her time; however she didn’t personally align her work with the style. While she painted dream and nightmare scenes of trauma and memories and incoherent images that explored her deepest fears, she believed her work reflected only her reality.

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

There are however a number of lesser-known International female Surrealist artists over the last century who deserve recognition and praise. Gertrude Abercrombie, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Helen Lundeberg, Dora Maar, Meret Oppenheim, Kay Sage and Leonora Carrington are just a few of the pioneering international female Surrealist artists.

Bird Bath by Leonora Carrington | Obelisk Art History

Leonora Carrington, Bird Bath, 1974, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Island.

While many art historians argue that Surrealism never made it in Australia, there are a number of Australian artists who explored and played with Surrealist and absurdist themes across their work. While predominately a Modernist group, the first ‘surrealists’ in Australia, were the Australian artistic and literary group of the 1940’s, the Angry Penguins and their members Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker.

The Voraciousness and Oddity of Dora Maar's Pictures | The New Yorker

“Untitled (Shell hand),” 1934. Photograph by Dora Maar / Courtesy Centre Pompidou / Philippe Migeat.

Since then, there have been a number of Australian female artists who have played with Surrealist themes throughout their practices, including Art Lovers Australia’s Evelyna Helmer, Tasmanian Pat Brassington, Patricia Piccinini, Louise Hearman and Dr Kelsey Ashe.

Here are five female Australian artists who incorporate Surrealist themes in their work:

1. – Evelyna Helmer

Woman with Ange. Hand cut found images, ink on Mylar

Evelyna Helmer is a multi-disciplinary contemporary artist who lives and works in Australia however she frequently works out of studios in both Florida and Chicago. Through the process of collecting, assembling, sculpting and painting, Helmer’s broad range of works contain a surreal visual language in which symbols, icons and familiarity are redirected into a tense strangeness. Her works include recognizable figurative elements which are intended to draw the viewer into the work and bridge a sense of connectivity.

Visit Evelyna’s Shop

2. – Pat Brassington

Pat Brassington, Electric, 2018 | Bett Gallery

Electric (2018) Pigment print.

Pat Brassington is a Tasmanian contemporary photographer and artist. Across her four-decade career, she has become one of Australia’s greatest surrealist photographers. Her work is known for its exploration of Surrealist, psychoanalytic and feminist themes.

3. – Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini | The Builder (2018) | Artsy

The Builder (2018) Silicone, fiberglass & hair

Focusing on themes of bio-ethics, unexpected events, dystopia and biological aberrations, Australian artist Patricia Piccinini works with video, sound, installation and sculptural mediums to create her ‘hyper-real grotesque genetic fantasies.’

4. – Louise Hearman

Untitled 1315 (2009) Oil on Masonite

Inspired by Gothic imagery, hyper real photography and the films of David Lynch, Louise Hearman’s images have a disturbing and distressing element to them that make them touch on a number of Surreal characteristics.

5. – Dr Kelsey Ashe

Sculpture Involuntaires (2020) Red Helmet Shells, leather, metal & plastic

Drawing from deep meditations on landscape, history and culture, Kelsey Ashe creates constructed realms within her creative works that hover between narrative and experience, myth and imagination.

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