Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World challenges the canonical narratives about surrealism and demonstrates how a unique artist boldly and newly expanded her activity and expression for the modern era.

Born in the small town of Galesburg, Illinois, the life and art of Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) perfectly illustrate the transnational spirit and nomadic practice of surrealism, all the more remarkable for a woman.

In Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, we travel with her through lived places and imagined spaces in Chicago, Arizona, Paris, Seillans, up to her final years in New York. Drawing on archives and extensive research to trace the history of the artist’s life over her seventy-year career, Alyce Mahon places Tanning at the very heart of avant-garde discussions on art and philosophical ideas.

She explores how this circle of relationships influenced Tanning’s work at critical moments in her career and how she overcame the challenge of being the wife of an already internationally established male artist. Mahon shows how Tanning’s work expanded postwar global surrealism by offering a world of kaleidoscopic and constantly changing perspectives.