Women of Surrealism (Paris, November 26-27, 2026) German Center for Art History (DFK Paris), November 26–27, 2026. Deadline: September 20, 2026

Women of Surrealism: Archives, Networks, Commitments (1920-1980).Study days on the occasion of the launch of the virtual exhibition "Simone Kahn, Surrealist Trajectories"

German Center for Art History (DFK Paris),André Breton Workshop Association (AAAB),Rhône-Alpes Historical Research Laboratory (LARHRA),Center for Research in Cultural and Social History of Art (HiCSA).

These study days accompany the inauguration of the virtual exhibition "Simone Kahn, Surrealist Trajectories," presented by the DFK Paris with the support of the Association Atelier André Breton. This exhibition brings together reproductions of hundreds of unpublished documents—correspondence, catalogues, press clippings, and photographs—from the personal archives of Simone Kahn (1897–1980), making available to the scholarly community a corpus that has remained largely inaccessible until now, covering half a century of the history of Surrealism.Long remembered by historians as André Breton's first wife, Simone Kahn is revealed, through the publication of her correspondence with Denise Lévy and Breton in 2005 and 2016, as a full-fledged member of the Surrealist group and a key interlocutor for painters and poets in the 1920s. As her archives confirm, she was present at every pivotal moment of the movement, from her participation in collective activities to her role in building the renowned collection she assembled with her husband at 42 rue Fontaine. Beyond this chronology, these same archives allow us to reconstruct Simone Kahn's still largely unknown life, a life marked, until her death in 1980, by her commitments. These commitments included political activism: she was active in the Communist Left, the Revolutionary Left, the Spanish Republicans, the Resistance, and later in the anti-colonial and feminist movements. Artistic engagement of the other: in addition to her important collection, she directed the galleries "Artiste et Artisan" and "Furstenberg" between 1948 and 1965, where she fostered dialogue between first-generation surrealists and young international artists, contributing to the renewal of the movement's networks after the war.

Following on from this virtual exhibition dedicated to Simone Kahn, the study days invite a broader reflection on the trajectory of women in Surrealism who contributed to the artistic, literary, and political dynamism of the movement through diverse and hybrid productions and initiatives, often difficult to identify and classify within the historiography of Surrealism (they are numerous, such as Gala, Nusch Éluard, Suzanne Muzard, Denise Lévy, etc.). Their roles—collectors, gallery owners, activists, translators, publishers, critics, patrons, organizers, and networkers—often overlap with the daily life of the movement: attendance at meetings, participation in collective activities, contribution to the production, dissemination, and circulation of works and ideas, and intellectual and emotional connections without which the group could not have existed. These study days also invite us to revisit the more fleeting trajectories of those whose links with Surrealism were more sporadic or intermittent—and whose traces in the archives remain largely to be reconstructed. This question is all the more relevant given that the most recent exhibitions devoted to Surrealism, while profoundly renewing historiography by giving visibility to many long-neglected artists, nevertheless tend, through their museographic approaches, to privilege contributions that take the form of exhibitable works, making it more difficult to highlight those of women whose engagement was expressed in other ways. Beyond simply expanding the corpus of recognized artists, the challenge is therefore to question the very categories through which the history of Surrealism is written and the forms of participation it privileges or leaves in the shadows.Starting with the career of Simone Kahn, several themes emerge for these study days, without, however, being limited to them:

Theme 1 — Archives and Historiographical Invisibility: Trajectories Irreducible to the WorkConsidering the place of those who left behind neither substantial visual nor literary works of Surrealism, but whose name or image appears in publications of the period, and whose archives attest to a continuous presence and a structuring role in the life of the group, through their participation in collective Surrealist artistic and poetic experiments, or their activities in correspondence, translation, editing, criticism, journal management, and intellectual sociability. How can we write the history of trajectories that escape the usual categories of art history and that only the archives reveal? How can we take into account the singularity of these archives, whose preservation, classification, and accessibility are themselves the subject of a history that needs to be examined?

Axis 2 — The Political Trajectories of Surrealist Women:Antifascists, anti-Stalinists, resistance fighters, anti-colonialists, or feminists; authors or signatories of leaflets; militants or activists: the political trajectories of Surrealist women, revealed by archival research, have not yet been the subject of any specific study. Yet, the conditions of their engagement, given their exclusion from French political life, are rooted in questions and contexts different from those of their male counterparts. Attention may be paid to the renewal of this commitment over the long term, in the legacy of surrealism, and in particular to the relations between the women of surrealism and the various feminist movements, still little studied in their diversity, between proximity and distancing (from Simone Kahn, who claims her adherence to the Women's Liberation Movement, to the positions of Annie Le Brun against "neo-feminist ideology" in Lâchez tout (1977), via Lise Deharme, who diverts the MLF into "Fairy Liberation Movement", etc.).

Theme 3 — Mediation, Galleries, and Networks: Women Gallery Owners, Collectors, and Patrons of Surrealism.This theme will examine their role, before and after the war, in the defense, dissemination, financing, circulation, and transmission of Surrealist works, writings, and ideas, as well as in supporting painters and poets in various forms: exhibitions, publications, commissions, and mediation with institutions (Peggy Guggenheim, Divonne Ratton, and others). Particular attention will be paid to the networks and friendships these women forged, which reveal a parallel, still largely unexplored, history of female solidarity within Surrealism. Case studies may also focus on the artists represented by Simone Kahn's galleries, "Artiste et Artisan" and "Furstenberg" (Edgar Jéné, Endre Rozsda, Agustín Fernández, Delia Nimo, etc.), and on the circulations they trace between France, Germany, Peru, Argentina and Cuba.

Submission Guidelines:Proposals for presentations (300 to 400 words), accompanied by a short biographical note, should be sent to conferencesimonekahn@gmail.com before September 20, 2026.Communications, lasting 25 to 30 minutes, may be presented in French or English.

Scientific and organizing committee:Jules Colmart, teaching assistant and doctoral candidate at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris;Julia Drost, research director, German Center for Art History (DFK Paris);Alice Ensabella, lecturer, Université Grenoble Alpes, LARHRA;Hélène Meisel, professor, European School of Art of Brittany, Rennes;Katia Sowels, lecturer, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, HiCSA