Surrealist Beasts

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the Swedish artist Greta Knutson has been acknowledged because of her marriage to Tristan Tzara. Knutson never signed any manifestos and the group exhibitions in which she participated around 1930 were loosely aligned rather than focused. Even though an editor, Brigitte Classen, was involved in the publication of Bestien and contributed a brief introduction, Greta Knutson was in charge of selecting images and texts. Bestien is comprised mainly of Knutson’s short stories and a few poems. La Surprise belongs to the late paintings Knutson called oneiric. Knutson works with contrasts between light and dark, but the overall impression can easily be described as uncanny.