Image via http://www.artbouillon.com/2016/12/outside-in-celebrating-of-forgotten.html
There is something unnerving about Unica Zürn’s drawings before you can really explain what you are looking at. Faces appear inside other faces. Eyes multiply across bodies that seem part human, part animal and part organism without a name. Fine lines gather into knots, scales, feathers and strange anatomical structures. The closer you look, the less stable the image becomes.
Zürn’s work belongs to Surrealism, but it rarely feels like a conventional dream. Her drawings have the private, obsessive quality of images pulled from somewhere much deeper inside the Artist.
Unica Zürn, Hexentexte, 1945, Image via 50watts.com
Who Was Unica Zürn?
Unica Zürn was born in Berlin in 1916 and moved to Paris in 1953, where she became involved with artist Hans Bellmer and entered the circle of postwar Surrealism. During the 1950s and 1960s she produced the drawings, paintings and writings for which she is now best known.
She worked across several forms and media at once. Zürn wrote fiction and poetry, constructed elaborate anagrams and developed a highly distinctive approach to automatic drawing.
For the Surrealists, automatic drawing was supposed to bypass conscious control and allow unexpected forms to emerge. In Zürn’s hands it became something unusually intricate.
A line might begin almost casually and slowly develop into a creature. Then another face appears. Then another pair of eyes. Soon the entire sheet seems inhabited with strange and conscious life.
Unica Zürn, Hexentexte, 1945, Image via artbouilon.com
Creatures Without Names
The creatures in Zürn’s drawings are difficult to classify. They resemble insects, birds, reptiles, plants and human bodies, but rarely remain one thing for long. Heads split into several identities. Bodies contain other bodies. Eyes stare outward from places where eyes should not exist.
Rather than placing monsters inside recognizable landscapes, Zürn often allowed the drawing itself to become the monster.
Her repetitive marks create a dense surface that can feel decorative from a distance. Up close, the beauty becomes stranger. Delicate patterns turn into teeth, nerves, feathers or skin. The transformation never completely stops even after the act.
Drawing and Anagrams
Zürn approached language in much the same way. Her anagram poems were created by rearranging the letters of sentences into new combinations. Words were broken apart and rebuilt until hidden meanings appeared.
Her drawings seem to follow a similar logic. A face can be dismantled and reconstructed into several faces. A body becomes an animal, which becomes a pattern, which becomes another body. Nothing is entirely destroyed, but nothing keeps its original identity either.
This connection between language and image became one of the most distinctive parts of Zürn’s work.
Image via https://alchetron.com/Unica-Z%C3%BCrn
Beauty, Obsession and Unease
It is tempting to interpret Zürn’s drawings entirely through her difficult personal life and periods of severe mental illness. That history is impossible to ignore, but it can also overshadow the precision of the work itself.
These were not simply chaotic visions placed onto paper. They are remarkably controlled and detailed drawings a language of line.
Lines repeat with patience. Forms balance against one another. Dense areas of detail suddenly open into empty space. Even the strangest creatures have an internal structure.
That tension is what gives the work much of its power. The images feel spontaneous and obsessive at the same time.
IN THE DUST OF THIS LIFE
Pale sieves a tired
Ax in the tree’s bosom.
In the foliage’s broom there is
Seed-blood-silk. Bites
in the lovenest of the building.
Sweetly fogs in its ice-bath
the Ibis’s blood. Masses
in the dust of this life.Montpellier 1955, Unica Zürn
A Private Surrealism
Unica Zürn died in Paris in 1970 at the age of fifty-four. Much of her most important visual work had been produced during the previous two decades.
Today her drawings occupy a strange position between Surrealism, automatic art, outsider art and the darker edges of fantastic imagery.
They do not need conventional horror symbols. There are no obvious demons waiting in the darkness.
The disturbing thing is the possibility that another creature is already hidden inside the face, the body or even the line itself—and that drawing is simply the act that allows it to appear.
Oracles et spectacles 7, 1967 Image via https://www.artsper.com/us/contemporary-artworks/print/135385/oracles-et-spectacles-7
Image via https://alchetron.com/Unica-Z%C3%BCrn
Artist Resources
Ubu Gallery — Unica Zürn
Biography, artworks, exhibitions, and archival material relating to Zürn’s drawings and writing.
https://www.ubugallery.com/artist/unica-zurn/
AWARE: Archives of Women Artists — Unica Zürn
A detailed overview of Zürn’s life and practice, including her relationship to Surrealism, automatic drawing, writing, and the human body.
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/unica-zurn/
Ubu Gallery — Unica Zürn: Drawings from the 1960s
Archive page for an exhibition devoted to Zürn’s intricate drawings from one of the most important periods of her career.
https://www.ubugallery.com/exhibition/unica-zurn-drawings-from-the-1960s/
Ubu Gallery — Witnessing Visions
Exhibition featuring Zürn alongside Brion Gysin, Henri Michaux, and Judit Reigl, with a focus on automatism, writing, and works on paper.
https://www.ubugallery.com/exhibition/witnessing-visions-brion-gysin-henri-michaux-judit-reigl-unica-zurn/
Ubu Gallery — Bound: Hans Bellmer & Unica Zürn
An exhibition archive examining the work and complicated artistic relationship between Zürn and Hans Bellmer.
https://www.ubugallery.com/exhibition/bound-hans-bellmer-unica-zurn/
Museum of Modern Art — The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors
MoMA exhibition material placing Zürn’s work within the broader history of Surrealist books, artists, and writers.
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5918
