A crossed life: Unica Zürn

Abstract

Born in 1916 in Berlin, Unica Zürn committed suicide in Paris in 1970. During the last twenty years of her life, this artist, painter, and sentimental companion of Hans Bellmer, fought against schizophrenia. She spent many periods in psychiatric hospitals and has described her mental illness, her remissions from this illness and the psychiatric universe in El Hombre-Jazmín. This is an unusual autobiography, narrated in third person and in the present historic, and represents a direct and perturbed testimony of a lucid nature about her experiences. The book includes anagrams that she developed over a long period of time.