Professor Alyce Mahon is giving a talk on her new book Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World (Yale University Press, 2026) at Cambridge University's Alumni Festival 18-20 September 2026.
19 September 2026
11:00-12:00GMT
Sidgwick Site, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP
Born on the day of a hurricane in Galesburg Illinois, Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) would become a figure at the very heart of the surrealist movement on American and French shores. Her art reflects the new directions of post-war Surrealism and her life story the challenges for a woman artist on the international stage. In this talk, Alyce Mahon shares Tanning’s extraordinary 70 year career, from Chicago and Arizona to Paris and Provence, and traces how her nomadic life was reshaped into kaleidoscopic imagined worlds in her paintings and sculptures.
Dorothea Tanning: Eine Kleine Nacktmusik, 1943, Tate Collection