Lucy Schwob, and her stepsister Suzanne Malherbe, were members of a wealthy publishing family from the city of Nantes in France. By the age of nineteen Lucy had established herself, under the name of Claude Cahun as a writer and photographer with work published in leading literary journals alongside writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire. In the 1920s she was attracted to the ideas of the Surrealist movement and, through her participation in the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Revolutionaires she met Andre Breton in 1932. She subsequently became active in the left-wing political group Contre-Attaque which was responding to the rise of Hitler in Germany and the spread of Fascism in France.
These artistic and political ideas informed much of Schwob's work which focussed on representations of the artist's own identity. Dressed in a variety of costumes, her self-portraits questioned the prevailing male-centric Surrealist position of her time through some complex explorations of her own gender and sexuality. Her use of a pseudonym underlines these concerns.
The sisters moved to Jersey, living at La Rocquaise in St Brelade overlooking the bay. With the Occupation their anti-Fascist stance became central to their lives as they set about attempting to subvert the authority of the German forces with propaganda inciting the troops to mutiny. They were eventually caught and spent the rest of the war in the prison at Gloucester Street, St Helier.
Lucy Schwob's health suffered during her time in prison and she never fully recovered. She died in 1954. A recent revival of interest in her work has led to several exhibitions in Paris and New York and a significant contribution to the Tate Modern's recent "Surrealism: Desire Unbound". |
- derived from a text originally published by the Jersey Heritage Trust in their Jersey Artists series.