1. Kurt Leopold Seligmann was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter, engraver, and occultist.
20 Facts About Kurt Seligmann
1. 2.
Kurt Seligmann was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights in macabre rituals and inspired by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.
3.
Kurt Seligmann was extremely influential within the Surrealist movement in Paris and particularly in the United States.
4.
Kurt Seligmann was the son of furniture dealer Gustav Seligmann and his wife Helene Guggenheim, a relative of Peggy Guggenheim.
5.
Kurt Seligmann took art classes with Ernst Buchner and Eugen Ammann.
6.
Kurt Seligmann left for Paris in 1929, where he reunited with Giacometti and Courthion.
7.
Kurt Seligmann put together a portfolio to impress Jean Arp and Andre Breton, two eminent Surrealists.
8.
Kurt Seligmann served on the executive board, as secretary, and finally as president Auguste Herbin's "right hand man" until the organization's dissolution in 1936.
9.
Kurt Seligmann joined Gruppe 33, an anti-fascist artist's organization based in Basel.
10.
Kurt Seligmann visited Alaska and British Columbia in 1938 to collect American ethnographic art for the Musee de l'Homme and spent much of his time looking at tribal art, causing him to develop a particular interest in totems.
11.
Kurt Seligmann was the first Surrealist to escape Europe and aided other artists in Paris in emigrating.
12.
In 1942, his relationship with Breton soured and quickly ended after Kurt Seligmann disputed Breton's knowledge of Tarot during a Surrealist meeting.
13.
Kurt Seligmann was expelled from the group and Breton blocked him from taking part in a major Surrealist exhibition at D'Arcy Galleries.
14.
Kurt Seligmann taught at Briarcliff Junior College and The New School for Social Research, but spent nearly a decade as part of the Brooklyn College faculty.
15.
Kurt Seligmann taught summer courses in graphic techniques from his farm in Sugar Loaf and designed sets for dance and ballet groups.
16.
Kurt Seligmann had a nonfatal heart attack in March 1958, preventing him from visiting Europe as planned.
17.
Kurt Seligmann gave up his Bryant Park studio and Manhattan apartment by 1960, apprehensive about his health and refusing to drive out of fear of having another heart attack, and spend the next two years painting and gardening on his Sugar Loaf farm.
18.
Kurt Seligmann dated English painter Ivy Langton for a time starting in 1932 before meeting Arlette Paraf during a summer trip to Geneva in 1935.
19.
Kurt Seligmann turned the barn into a studio and had an etching press installed.
20.
The copyright representative for the Foundation and Kurt Seligmann's estate is the Artists Rights Society.