| Vendor | |
|---|---|
|
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Categories | |
ALCHEMY OF A BLACKBIRD
For readers of Z and The Age of Light, this is a historical novel based on the lives of the painters Remedios Varos and Leonora Carrington--each beginning as a mascot of the Surrealist movement and the muse of a famous lover and then breaking away to become an icon in her own right through the artistic collaboration and friendship that sprung from their exploration of the tarot.
In search for a safe haven from the Nazis, the young painter Remedios Varo and her lover, surrealist poet Benjamin Peret, escape occupied Paris for Villa Air Bel, a safe house for artists on the Riviera. As the months pass waiting for exit papers in the company of his famous friends Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, Remedios begins to understand that they see her as a child, not an artist; they have cast her in the role of a surrealist ideal: the beautiful innocent or the femme sorciere, the mysterious witch. While she resists the child-like role, there is another part of the role she has begun to embrace. In a mysterious bookshop in Marseilles, she stumbled into the world of occult learning and found a mystical alchemy that helps her access her creative genius: the tarot.
When travel documents come through, Remedios and Benjamin flee to Mexico. There she is reunited with her great friend and fellow painter Leonora Carrington, who spent most of the war in an insane asylum. Mexico becomes their new homeland, and there the women tap their creativity, stake their independence, and find their true loves. But it is the tarot that enables them to access the transcendent that lies on the other side of consciousness, to become the truest Surrealists of all.
The Alchemy of a Blackbird is a novel about a historic and unique artistic collaboration between two female friends who became giants of the art world.
Claire McMillan is the author of Gilded Age and The Necklace. She is the 2017-2018 Cuyahoga County Writer in Residence and currently serves as member of the Board of Trustees of the Mount, Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, Mass. She practiced law until 2003 and then received her MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.
When travel documents come through, Remedios and Benjamin flee to Mexico. There she is reunited with her great friend and fellow painter Leonora Carrington, who spent most of the war in an insane asylum. Mexico becomes their new homeland, and there the women tap their creativity, stake their independence, and find their true loves. But it is the tarot that enables them to access the transcendent that lies on the other side of consciousness, to become the truest Surrealists of all.
The Alchemy of a Blackbird is a novel about a historic and unique artistic collaboration between two female friends who became giants of the art world.
Claire McMillan is the author of Gilded Age and The Necklace. She is the 2017-2018 Cuyahoga County Writer in Residence and currently serves as member of the Board of Trustees of the Mount, Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, Mass. She practiced law until 2003 and then received her MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.
| Available products |
|---|
|
Book
Published 2023-07-11 |
|
Book
Published 2023-07-11 by Atria Books |