Magnetic Mountain

Kurt SeligmannWW-1948-013884

1948·Oil on canvas·162.6 × 188 cm (64 × 74 in.)

<p>After Kurt Seligmann settled in Paris, his sinister, biomorphic compositions gained the attention of André Breton, who invited him to join the Surrealist group in 1937. With the outbreak of World War II, Seligmann became the first Surrealist to arrive in New York and was instrumental in the emigration of most of the movement’s leading figures. Transformed by contact with new cultures, Seligmann’s work continued to evolve, and as the Surrealists’ acknowledged expert on magic, he infused his paintings with mythology and esotericism. Indeed, the year he made this work, he published <em>The Mirror of Magic</em>, a history of the occult. The winding forms and mystical quality of this canvas would influence a new generation of American artists, including his student, Robert Motherwell.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1948
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 162.6 × 188 cm (64 × 74 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Kurt Seligmann

Artist

Kurt Seligmann

Painting

Kurt Seligmann was an American painter and printmaker who worked across abstraction and figuration, creating dense, layered compositions that incorporated automatist techniques and mythological imagery. Active in the postwar period, he developed a distinctly personal synthesis of Surrealist methods and Jungian psychology, translating psychological states into complex visual narratives. His work combined painting, etching, and collage to explore the unconscious as a generative space.

New York, USA

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