Surrealist Summer: Nusch
Another heatwave, another very short post (long-form writing will return soon, I promise!) featuring some of my favourite avant-garde women in the sunshine. This edition centres on Nusch Éluard.
Nusch Éluard was a French performer, model, and Surrealist artist. She was born Maria Benzn on 21 June 1906 in Mulhouse, then part of the German Empire, and acquired the nickname “Nusch” from her short-term husband, Swiss architect and artist Max Bill, who she met at the Odeon Café in Zürich.
She moved to Paris in 1928 and worked as a multi-hyphenated stage performer, small-time actress, traveling acrobat, and “hypnotist‘s stooge.” In 1930, while working as a model, she met the poet Paul Éluard, and they married in 1934. Nusch produced Surrealist photomontages and other works and appeared in “Facile,” Éluard’s poetry collection published as a photogravure book, in a series of nude photographs taken by Man Ray. During World War II, she worked for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France.
Nusch Èluard died on 28 November 1946, of a massive stroke on the streets of Paris. She eternally resides at Père Lachaise cemetery.
Nusch's smile is one of the happiest I ever saw! Thanks for this brief profile. I'm looking forward to more on the women surrealists as the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto on October 15th this year grows nearer.