Nusch Éluard
Nusch Éluard (born June 21, 1906 in Mulhouse ; † November 28, 1946 in Paris ; born Maria Benz ) was a Franco-German actress , model , variety artist and a muse of surrealists . She was the second wife of the poet Paul Éluard .
Life
Nusch Éluard in photographs and paintings
(external web links)
- Dora Maar: Les années vous guettent (Nusch Eluard) , 1932
- Man Ray, Paul Éluard: Facile , 1935
- Man Ray: Sonia Mossé et Nusch Éluard , 1936
- Lee Miller: Nusch Éluard in a car , Mougins, France, 1937
- Pablo Picasso: Nusch Éluard , oil on canvas, 1937
- Pablo Picasso: Nusch Éluard , charcoal and pencil on canvas, 1938
Maria Benz, known as "Nusch", began her career in Berlin as an actress in theater and variety productions. On stage she played smaller roles in pieces by August Strindberg . Around 1920 she posed as a photo model for postcards. From 1920 she appeared as an acrobat , hypnotist and performer at the Théâtre du Grand Guignol in Paris and worked as a photo model. In 1929 she played at the Zürcher Schauspielhaus and met Max Bill , who was returning to Zurich from the Bauhaus Dessau , wanted to marry her and named her after the libretto by Franz Blei Das Nusch-Nuschi (1921), a one-act opera composed by Paul Hindemith , Nusch ”, which she later kept. In 1930 she went back to France and met René Char and Paul Éluard , who introduced her to the circle of Parisian Surrealists. At the time, she posed as a model for Man Ray . In the mid-1930s, Man Ray published the books Facile (with Paul Éluard, 1935) and La Photographie n'est pas l'art (with André Breton , 1937) in which he used solarized nude photographs by Nusch Éluard. With Paul Éluard, who had just separated from his wife Gala - they divorced in 1932 - they began a love affair. Nusch and Paul Éluard married in 1934, just one week after the wedding of André Breton and Jacqueline Lamba , in order to underline the mutual friendship. Only four years later, Breton would ban Paul Éluard from the group of Surrealists.
Another lasting friendship arose from a meeting with Pablo Picasso . Together with Picasso, whose then partner Dora Maar , as well as Man Ray, Adrienne "Ady" Fidelin, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller , the Éluards spent their summer holidays in Mougins , Picasso's later retirement home. The photographer Dora Maar and Nusch were good friends. Maar had already taken a few portrait photographs of her in the 1930s , and Nusch later also sat as a model for some portrait paintings for Picasso. At times she is said to have had an affair with him.
The Éluards lived in Paris around 1940. When they were occupied by the Germans, they joined the Resistance . In 1942 Paul Éluard rejoined the PCF , the French Communist Party; meanwhile, Nusch was distributing his subversive poems, hidden in candy boxes.
On November 28, 1946, Nusch Éluard collapsed dead on the street in Paris with a stroke . She was buried there on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (Division 84).
literature
- Whitney Chadwick: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement . Thames & Hudson, London 1991, reprint 2002, ISBN 0-500-27622-6 (English)
- Chantal Vieuille: Nusch, portrait d'une muse du Surréalisme. Artelittera, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-9536249-0-8 (French)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Angela Thomas : with a subversive shine. max bill and his time. volume 1: 1908-1939. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008, p. 280 and p. 289; Erich Schmid : Max Bill - the absolute sense of proportion, CH 2008, min. 22:51.
- ^ Sandra S. Phillips: Man Rays Photography in the Twenties and Thirties. In: Man Ray - His Complete Works. Edition Stemmle, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7231-0388-X , pp. 221, 228
- ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Nusch Éluard
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Éluard, Nusch |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Benz, Maria (birth name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Franco-German actress, model, variety artist and muse of surrealists |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 21, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mulhouse |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 28, 1946 |
| Place of death | Paris |