leonora carrington
frida kahlo
leonor fini
lee miller
meret oppenheim
remedios varo

Studied painting in Paris; in 1919 married Jean Hugo, great-grandson of Victor Hugo.

Collaborated with him on designs for the ballet including Jean Cocteau's Maries de la Tour Eiffel (1921); in 1926 executed twenty-four wood engravings after maquettes by Jean Hugo for Romeo and Juliette.

Met the Surrealists around 1928 and actively participated in the movement between 1930 and 1936.

The foremost illustrator of Paul Eluard's work, she first exhibited with the Surrealists in the Salon des Surindependants of 1933.

Her many illustrations include: Lautreamont, Chants de Maldoror (1933); Achim d'Arnim's Contes Bizarres (1933); Rimbaud, Les Poetes de Sept Ans (1939); Eluard, Les Animaux et Leurs Hommes (1937).

A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Centre Culturel Thibaud de Champagne, Troyes, in 1977.

She was a wonderful, incisive artist who deserves to better well-know today than she is. Forget the surname; just think of the body of work...

Exhibitions: Tenerife (1935), Copenhagen (1935), New York (1937), Tokyo (1937).

Gallery:

Nusch Eluard, Valentine Hugo, c. 1934.
Photo: Timothy Baum (Low Quality Scan)

More info: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Surrealist Object, 1931.
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Leather, wood. Present location unknown. Photograph reproduced in Le Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution, no. 3, December 1931.

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Dream of 21 December 1929, 1929.
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Oil on canvas. Present location unknown. Photograph reproduced in , Copenhagen, 1935.

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Valentine Hugo, 1931.
Photo: Man Ray (Low Quality Scan)

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Collage of members of the Surrealist group, 1934.
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Valentine Hugo shifted her allegiance to the Surrealist group around 1929. Briefly linked romantically with Eluard and Breton, she continued to illustrate Eluard's work until his death. Married to Jean Hugo until 1929, she was the first woman to enter the Surrealist orbit with a professional reputation as an artist already established. She was a major visual interpreter of Surrealist texts. Hugo dedicated her collage of members of the Surrealist group to Jacqueline Lamba Breton and in an interview published later in her life she recalled the support and encouragement provided by her friendships with Eluard, Breton, and other Surrealists.

Here's a little quiz. Can you name all the Surrealists in the collage? I'll do the easy ones: see if you can get any of the others. Winners get nothing but their first name mentioned here. E-mail here. There's Breton _three times), Eluard, Tzara, Ernst, Dali, Bunuel ... can you get any of the others?

Present location unknown. Formerly collection of Jean Petithory, Paris.

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Cover of Contes Bizarres, by Achim d'Arnim, 1935.
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Engraving. 7 x 10 1/4.

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Entretians
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Letter transcibed by Valentine Hugo. Date unknown.

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1934
Valentine Hugo (Low Quality Scan)

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

Valentine Hugo in front of her painting, The Constellations, 1935
Photo: Man Ray (Low Quality Scan)

Collection Jean Petithory, Paris

Source: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement

For scans without watermarks e-mail here

Wares:

whitney chadwick
women artists and the surrealist movement
book 1989

(see and read why this is the most important book on surrealism, both male and female, ever written - valentine hugo included extensively - more scans on the book than anywhere in the universe!)

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