A new novel about the women artists of the surrealist movement will be published on the same day as the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto.
Kathy Hopewell’s novel Swimming with Tigers is a fictional recreation of the experiences of several young women artists who joined the surrealist movement in the 1930s.
There is currently a huge upsurge of interest in the work of the women surrealists. Remedios Varo had a major retrospective in Chicago last year, in May this year Leonora Carrington’s painting The Distractions of Dagobert sold for a record £22.5 million, and a film about Lee Miller is coming out this September starring Kate Winslet. This is the culmination of a wave that began to gather in the 1980s, with the work of feminist historians of art such as Whitney Chadwick.
The occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto on October 15th 2024, is the perfect moment to make sure that the women of surrealism are placed alongside the ‘great men’ such as Salvador Dali, René Magritte and Pablo Picasso.
Kathy Hopewell’s novel presents the dilemmas of the desirable, sexy and adventurous women of the surrealist movement from the perspective of the women themselves. Instead of merely being the idealised and adored figures who were painted and photographed by the men in the surrealist group, these ambitious young women wanted to be artists in their own right. Leonora Carrington famously described the idea of being some man’s muse as ‘bullshit’. By contrast, Swimming with Tigers foregrounds the supportive friendships that existed between the women and includes the dramatic events of the outbreak of war which had an impact on all the artists’ lives.
Dr Kathy Hopewell was until recently a lecturer in Women’s Studies at Bangor University, where she ran a postgraduate degree and specialised in women’s literature, art and cultural production of the twentieth century. She is now an independent author and teacher of creative writing.
Please contact using the comments box below.
Swimming with Tigers is available for pre-order from a number of outlets including Amazon (ebook) and Waterstones (paperback).
Date of publication: 15th October 2024
Kathy Hopewell is located in North Wales, UK
Advance review copies available on enquiry, again please leave a comment here.
Suggested actions:
- An article placing Swimming with Tigers in the context of the recent upsurge of interest in the women of surrealism and as an intervention into the histories of art using fiction as an activist tool.
- A review of the novel drawing on the context above and focusing on its literary qualities as a pacy historical novel accessible to all readers including those with no specialist knowledge of surrealism or the history of art.