This pioneering book stands as the most comprehensive treatment of the lives, ideas, and art works of the remarkable group of women who were an essential part of the Surrealist movement. Leonora Carrington, Léonor Fini, Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Tanning, among many others, became an embodiment of their age as they struggled towards artistic maturity and their own ‘liberation of the spirit’ in the context of the Surrealist revolution.

Their stories and their achievements are presented here against the background of the turbulent decades of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the war that forced Surrealism into exile in New York and Mexico. Whitney Chadwick, author of the highly acclaimed Women, Art, and Society, interviewed and corresponded with most of the artists personally in the course of her research. Now revised, and with a new foreword by art historian Dawn Ades, this book contains a wealth of extracts from unpublished writings, and numerous illustrations that previous to this publication had never before been reproduced in print.

This groundbreaking study transformed the critical fortunes of the artists involved, and inspired a wholesale revision of the Surrealists’ story. It has acquired classic status among artists, art historians, critics and cultural historians, and remains essential reading for anyone with an interest in the field.