In this talk, Colin Browne will reflect on the journey of surrealist Wolfgang Paalen (Austrian), Alice Paalen (French), and Eva Sulzer (Swiss), to Alaska and British Columbia in 1939.
In May of 1939, thirty-three-year-old surrealist artist Wolfgang Paalen, his wife, the poet and artist Alice Rahon, and their companion, Eva Sulzer, left Paris en route to Mexico City where they’d been invited to visit the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. First, however, they crossed Canada by rail to Prince Rupert (Lax Kxeen) and travelled the length of the Pacific Northwest Coast from Dzánti K’ihéeni (Juneau), Alaska, to Vancouver, meeting up along the way with Marius Barbeau, William Newcombe, and Emily Carr. A few months earlier, in Paris, Paalen had witnessed the raising of a totem pole purchased by his friend, the surrealist artist Kurt Seligmann, in northern British Columbia the year before. Like Seligmann, Paalen was deeply attracted to the monumental and ceremonial works of the Northwest Coast. In his estimation, they were equal to the masterpieces of Europe.
Like his surrealist colleagues he also shared an obsession for collecting and devoted himself on the journey to seeking out and acquiring ceremonial belongings. His acquisitions from Alaska, British Columbia and, later, New York during the 1940s, became one of the significant private collections in North America. Many of these objects are now in major museums. The same period saw Paalen create a series of masterpieces in the studio.
The talk will reflect on his belief, in the depths of WW II, that by embracing the new model of the universe offered by quantum physics and combining it with the achievements of the communal societies of the Northwest Coast, the world could be transformed for the better.
Colin Browne is a poet, editor, documentary filmmaker, film historian, and Professor Emeritus in the School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU.
Please register here: https://migration.ubc.ca/events/event/the-possible-surrealists-2026/