Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun (1894-1954) was a Jewish-French artist who was an integral member of the Surrealist movement and a prominent political activist in the French Resistance. Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, Cahun took the gender-neutral name Claude around 1919. Cahun settled in Paris in the twenties where she became involved with the avant-garde and Surrealist movement. Cahun’s work has been widely exhibited with prominent solo exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; and Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Though Cahun was active primarily in the first half of the twentieth century, her work did not receive widespread recognition until the late twentieth century when French art historian François Leperlier reinvigorated interest in her work. Cahun’s early experiments with performativity, gender and identity re-emerged from the depths of history at a time when many artists, especially women and queer artists, were challenging mainstream constructions of gender, identity and sexuality.