Kurt Seligmann

Kurt Seligmann (Basel, 1900 – Sugar Loaf, New York, 1962) was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He is best known for fantastic images of medieval troubadours and knights caught in macabre rituals, partly inspired by the annual carnival of his native Basel. Trained in Geneva and active in the Parisian Surrealist circle, he moved to New York in 1939 and did much of his mature work there.

In Paris he reconnected with Alberto Giacometti and Pierre Courthion, joined Abstraction-Création, and in 1937 was admitted to André Breton's Surrealist group. His paintings of the mid-1930s became more baroque. In 1944, in New York, he produced a limited edition of six etchings on the Oedipus myth, with a text by Meyer Schapiro, generally regarded as his finest achievement in printmaking.

He taught for years at several colleges around New York, including Brooklyn College. He had a notable influence on American Surrealism, though the rise of Abstract Expressionism pushed his work into the background.