Penelope Rosemont
1942– · American visual artist, writer and editor of the Surrealist movement
Penelope Rosemont (Chicago, 1942) is an American visual artist, writer, editor and social activist associated with Surrealism. She matters for helping to bring Surrealism to the United States and for giving visibility to the women of the movement.
In 1965 she travelled with Franklin Rosemont to Paris, where they met André Breton and the Surrealist group shortly before he fell seriously ill. The following year, together with Franklin Rosemont and others, she helped establish the Chicago Surrealist Group. During the 1960s she was involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) and with Students for a Democratic Society. She studied at Lake Forest College.
From 1970 to 1989 the group sporadically published the magazine Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, to which she contributed as writer and graphic designer. As a painter, collagist and photographer she is credited with inventing collage methods such as "landscaping" and "insect music". Her writings include Athanor (1971) and Surrealist Experiences: 1001 Dawns, 221 Midnights (2000), and as editor she prepared Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (1998), with a long introduction.
Her legacy combines artistic practice with editing and activism, and her work on Surrealist women has helped correct their omission from the movement's history.