Kurt Seligmann

Kurt Seligmann
Kurt Seligmann, pictured in an Italian museum passport, 1927
Born	1900 Basel, Switzerland
Died	1962
Nationality	Swiss
Education	Ecole des Beaux Arts
Known for	Fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights engaged in macabre rituals
Movement	Surrealism
Spouse(s)	Arlette Paraf

Kurt Leopold Seligmann (1900–1962) was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights engaged in macabre rituals and inspired partially by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.

He was born in Basel, in 1900, the son of a successful furniture department store owner. His parents were not in favor of his artistic aspirations but eventually relented. After study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva and several unhappy years working in his father's business in Basel, Seligmann left for Paris where he looked up his old friends from Geneva, sculptor Alberto Giacometti and art critic Pierre Courthion. During this time he also met Ivy Langton (who may have become an artist due to inspiration from Kurt). Through Giacometti he met Hans Arp and Jean Helion, who admired his sinister biomorphic paintings and invited him to join their group, Abstraction-Creation Art Non-Figuratif. In the mid-1930s his work began to take on a more baroque aspect, as he animated the prancing figures in his paintings and etchings with festoons of ribbons, drapery, and heraldic paraphernalia.

It was about this time (1935) that he met and married Arlette Paraf, a granddaughter of the founder of the Wildenstein Gallery, which had locations in Paris, London, and New York. Together they traveled extensively, first around the world during a year-long honey-moon trip in 1936 and then to North America and British Columbia (1938) to satisfy their interest in American ethnographic art. In 1937, Seligmann was accepted as a formal member of the Surrealist group in Paris by André Breton, who collected his work and included him in Surrealist exhibitions.