»Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me«, is how Claude Cahun described herself in her autobiography. Born Lucy Schwob, the Frenchwoman was an extraordinary artistic and social phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century. She dedicated her life to freedom of thought and the emancipation of the individual − and was far ahead of her time. In her early 20s, Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1917, and from 1920 she wore a bald head. She associated with the surrealists around André Breton, and her photographs and collages are attributed to this movement. Cahun also acted in surrealist plays and ran her own artists' salon. From January 13 to March 17, Nottingham offers the opportunity to delve deeper into her work: Claude Cahun: Beneath This Mask has been organized by Lakeside Arts, the University of Nottingham's Arts Programme. A talk with further background information on the artist will take place on February 7 from 1 pm.
Claude Cahun (1894-1954) came from a family of intellectuals and received a high level of education rarely seen for a woman. She fought communism and fascism throughout her life. With her partner Suzanne Malherbe, who had adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore, Cahun fled from the National Socialists to the island of Jersey in the English Channel in 1937. Both were eventually captured and sentenced to death in 1944. They were pardoned a year later following liberation by the Allies, but much of Cahun's artistic work had been destroyed by the Gestapo in the meantime. Today, the few self-portraits that have survived are much better known than they were in the post-war period.
