Greta Knutson-Tzara as International Intermediary: French and Swedish Surrealism in the Long Run

Greta Knutson? Greta Knutson-Tzara! A typical fate for many women modernist artists has been to be remembered as the wife of a famous artist or writer. This is also the case of Greta Knutson (1899–1983) who met the poet Tristan Tzara in Paris and was married to him 1924–1942, during the French Surrealist heydays. She was a Swedish painter who spent most of her life in France and whose work is little known. Despite her long life and her prolific output as artist and writer, her art has been neglected – even in much of research done on women Surrealists.
Therefore, an obvious task is to examine her work in different media as well as to contextualise it within art history. Her productive years, spanning most of the 20th century, provide ample opportunities to do this. Furthermore, her role within the Surrealist movement, of which she was an important part, may be examined.
But the aim is not to once again focus on a forgotten artist, but rather to use this occasion to shed new light on Surrealism as it evolved over the decades. Indeed, Knutson’s art proves the point: that Surrealism could take on many varying disguises and, after all, is a vague characterisation at best. But then, what constitutes a Surrealist work? What happened to Surrealism after the war? In this context, we claim that Knutson may be used as point of departure for a remapping of international Surrealism.
Norrköping Art Museum has initiated a research project that will provide the basis for an exhibition on Greta Knutson-Tzara in 2019. For that reason, we will organise a workshop in November 2017 to bring together international scholars for a discussion on Knutson as well as the context in which she worked. We invite scholars to propose papers that may include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Greta Knutson-Tzara in general (including her politics, art criticism, paintings, drawings et cetera)
- Surrealism in a long perspective and context (e.g. how did it develop after WW II internationally?)
- Surrealism and questions of canonisation (gender, nationalism, et cetera)
- Co-production and overlapping (e.g. the cadavre exquis)
- “Doubly gifted” – The artist as writer, the writer as artist
- Remapping Surrealist networks in Scandinavia and internationally

Funding, for international scholars in particular, will be applied for so as to reimburse for travel and accommodation, but cannot be guaranteed at this point. The workshop is organised in cooperation with the Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University. Furthermore, we hope that this occasion may serve as inspiration for an international conference to take place during the exhibition period in 2019.
Please send an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a short CV to martin.sundbergnorrkoping.se by March 19th, 2017. Contact: Martin Sundberg, PhD, Curator, Collection & Research
Date of workshop: November 9th, 2017
Place: Norrköping Art Museum, Sweden