Wolfgang Paalen: Artist and Theorist of the Avant-Garde

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Summary: Reviews-Quinones-Keber, Conley, Karlstrom
Review: Endorsement From Eloise Quinones Keber Professor of Pre-Columbian and Latin American Art The Graduate Center and Baruch College City University of New York:
This is an impressive work of scholarship that will have tremendous appeal to anyone interested in 20th-century art, Surrealism in Paris and Mexico, and the development of Abstract Expressionism. Winter's study of the charismatic emigre artist, critic, and dealer spotlights his life and career and describes artistic and intellectual currents in Europe and the Americas, especially between the two world wars. Exhaustively researched, it is an immensely readable and well-illustrated book that restores Paalen as a major artist of the period and an influential scholar of modern and ethnographic art.
Endorsement From Katharine Conley Associate Professor of French and Italian Dartmouth College:
A wonderful contribution to surrealist scholarship that clearly situates Paalen at the vanguard of surrealist thought and innovation within essential biographical, historical, and philosophical contexts. Relying on new, previously unpublished sources, Winter gives an eloquent portrayal of an artist who revised European surrealism according to a New World aesthetic vision that significantly influenced the New York School.

Endorsement From Paul J. Karlstrom West Coast Regional Director Smithsonian Institute Archives of American Art:
Through her study of Paalen, Winter has produced an impressive intellectual and cultural history, one that goes beyond the usual reach of art historical investigation. And such an approach is not only appropriate but also essential for an artist who must rank as one of the more sophisticated and original thinkers of his day. . . . The book is nothing less than a seminar in many of the issues that challenged the best minds of the twentieth century.

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Summary: Review by Linda Dalrymple Henderson
Review: Endorsement From Linda Dalrymple Henderson David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History and Distinguished Teaching Professor, The University of Texas at Austin:
Amy Winter has written the definitive book on Wolfgang Paalen. Grounded in years of extensive archival work and interviews, Winter's superb study reconstructs Paalen's career, illuminating his art and theory as well as providing invaluable insights into the various artistic milieus in which he operated--from 1920s Berlin to Surrealism in Paris and Mexico in the 1930s and his subsequent impact on young American artists in New York in the 1940s. This book is a vital resource for any scholar of the period and a major addition to the literature on modernism in general.