NEWS

Internationally renowned publisher Humanoids announced today brand new original graphic novel BETRAYAL OF THE MIND: THE SURREAL LIFE OF UNICA ZURN, a rare English-language work tracing the life and fate of the famous Surrealist  figure Unica Zürn from noted contemporary artist Céline Wagner. Available in March 2024.

A childhood devastated by rape, the absence of an idealized father, a strict moral mother, and a passion for art shaped Unica Zürn. One of the only prominent female figures of the Surrealist movement, Zürn was tormented by inner demons that she shared through her automatic drawings and anagram poems. She longed for and rejected intimacy at once, seeking her so-called Man of Jasmine, an idealized male figure, throughout her life while living as the partner of Hans Bellmer, noted artist and photographer. 

As her schizophrenia began to overtake her, she longed to make the woman she once was disappear into the nameless pronoun She. In the eyes of Unica Zürn, madness was the only way to be in the world.

Born in 1975 in the Val d'Oise, Céline Wagner is a graduate of the Polycréa Design School in Toulouse and has lived and worked in the Lot region since 2000. In 2003, she co-wrote a book with E. Baudoin, Les yeux dans le mur (Dupuis). In 2009, she discovered butô during an interview given by singer Antony Hegarty on the occasion of the release of his work The Crying Light and in 2016 released Frapper le sol, Tatsumi Hijikata sur la voie du butô, which won the Grand Prix Artémisia that same year. Betrayal Of The Mind is her seventh graphic novel.

BETRAYAL OF THE MIND: THE SURREAL LIFE OF UNICA ZURN will be available in bookstores everywhere (bookshop.org)  and in comic shops (comicshoplocator.com) in March 2024. Digital copies can be purchased from comiXology and other digital platforms.