20th Century French

In Mexico, Alice Rahon is regarded as one of the most brilliant surrealist artists. Although she was born in France, Rahon is still largely unknown in her country of birth as her career as an artist is mostly circumscribed to Mexico. Of her childhood between Paris and the coast of Britany we know that an accident, that put her in casts and left her prostrated for long periods, led the young Alice to introspection and an observation of nature.

In her youth she was active as a poet in surrealist circles. In 1936 and 1938 she published in Paris two plaquettes, respectively illustrated by Yves Tanguy (1900-1905) and Joan Miró (1893-1983). Inspired by the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard, these works posed questions on the relationship between the imaginary and the rational.

With the outbreak of World War II she went into exile in Mexico, joining the wave of European refugees and with them a new lineage of surrealists which espoused new postulates and gave Breton’s aesthetics a new lease of life in America. She arrived in Mexico via Alaska and British Columbia in the company of her Austrian husband Wolfgang Paalen (1905-1959), a painter, theorist and publisher who introduced new notions into Mexico’s visual arts. He was also the illustrator of Rahon’s new collection of poems, published in Mexico in 1941. In this country she began to create a brand of painting with great poetic charge and had her first solo exhibition in 1944, at Galería de Arte Mexicano.