Maruja Mallo’s “El racimo de uvas” (1944).Credit© The Estate of Maruja Mallo. Courtesy of Ortuzar Projects, New York.

Even within artistic circles, these women were often excluded or treated as muses to male creative genius (Dalí once described Mallo as “half angel, half shellfish”). Their work, however, insists on a different story. Mallo — who never married and who eventually stopped putting clearly identifiable men in her paintings — created a painted world that suggests a wonderfully aggressive mind in search of beauty, but unconcerned with looking pretty.
[Thessaly La Force, “The Works of These Female Surrealists Resonate Now More Than Ever,” NYTimes, 8-8-18]

[Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.]