Kurt Seligmann
Melusine and the Great Transparents
1943
Painted in the late 1940s by the Swiss-born Surrealist Kurt Seligmann (1900–1962), 'Melusina and the Great Transparents' places the medieval water-serpent fairy Mélusine amid the 'Grands Transparents' — the hypothetical transparent beings André Breton had proposed in 1942. Seligmann was the Surrealists' chief scholar of magic and the occult during the group's New York exile. The oil on canvas is a key work of the Art Institute of Chicago's late-Surrealist holdings.
Exhibition Venue
Image source: Art Institute of Chicago