Partner Sonja Sekula

Queer Places:
45593 Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico

Photo of Alice Rahon.jpgAlice Phillipot (Alice Rahon) (8 June 1904 – September 1987) was a French/Mexican poet and artist whose work contributed to the beginning of abstract expression in Mexico. Many similarities can be drawn between French-Mexican artist and poet Alice Rahon, and Frida Kahlo. Like Kahlo, Rahon was married to a well-known male artist, Wolfgang Paalen, and both enjoyed same sex relationships. Although Rahon’s lesbian sexuality (she travelled to Mexico with Valentine Penrose, the first wife of British Surrealist Roland Penrose, who later married Lee Miller) often places her art in queer margins, we can instead read it as being free and raw, filled with the most intense emotions generated by another lover regardless of their gender. She was instrumental in highlighting how a woman could find inspiration in another of her sex without relegating them into submission. Her best-known poem, “Sablier couché”, is the perfect example of reflection and longing – her autobiographical account of a trapped marriage. She gave the muse a voice and we hear the freedom of her words.

Rahon began as a surrealist poet in Europe but began painting in Mexico. She was a prolific artist from the late 1940s to the 1960s, exhibiting frequently in Mexico and the United States, with a wide circle of friends in these two countries. Her work remained tied to surrealism but was also innovative, including abstract elements and the use of techniques such as sgraffito and the use of sand for texture. She became isolated in her later life due to health issues, and except for retrospectives at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1986 and at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 2009 and 2014,[1] she has been largely forgotten, despite her influence on Mexican modern art.

Rahon was born Alice Marie Yvonne Philppot[2] in Chenecey-Buillon, Quingey in the east of France.[3][4] Her most vivid memories of childhood were of Brittany, the house of her paternal grandparents in Roscoff, where she passed long periods of time in the summer and during the Christmas holidays. She also remembered visiting the beaches of Morlaix.[5] When she was about three years old, she suffered a serious accident which put her in casts and affected the rest of her life. One of the injuries was a fracture in the right hip, which forced her to recuperate lying down for long periods of time. This left her isolated from other children, including her younger sister Geo, spending time in the family garden reading, writing and drawing to occupy her mind.[6] This isolation was reinforced when she fell again at age twelve, breaking a leg. These events gave her an identity of fragility and by the time she was a teenager, she preferred solitude, creating worlds of her own imagination.[4][7] For the rest of her life she always walked with a slight limp and pain.[8] She became pregnant when she was very young, but the child had a congenital defect and died soon after birth.[7] When she and her sister were young women, they lived in Paris and discovered its bohemian scene. In 1931, she met artist Wolfgang Paalen and they married in 1934. With him she became involved with the Surrealism movement, published poetry under the name Alice Paalen, and met others such as Eva Sulzer, a Swiss photographer, with whom she was lifelong friends.[4][9] Her life with Paalen also introduced her to travel, which she did much of during her life. In 1933, the couple visited the cave paintings at Altamira and in 1936, she traveled to India accompanied by poet Valentine Penrose. Both of these travels had impact on her life and art, even naming two cats Vishnu and Subhashini in her late life.[10] She traveled extensively during much of her life with later voyages to Alaska, Canada, the United States, Lebanon and in Mexico.[4] Rahon, Paalen and Sulzer were invited to visit Mexico by Andre and Jacqueline Breton and Frida Kahlo .[4][11] They first traveled in Alaska, British Columbia and the U.S. west coast, where Paalen became fascinated by indigenous art.[11] They finally arrived to Mexico City in 1939, at first staying in a hotel in the San Ángel neighborhood. She became friends with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. With Frida she shared frustrations of a fragile body and the inability to have children as well as using art and writing to pass the time.[11][12] The bond with Frida led to the later creation of a painting called La balada para Frida Kahlo.[12] Both the couple's fascination with the country and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, prompted them to remain permanently in the country, with Rahon becoming a Mexican citizen in 1946.[13]

Through Andre Breton, Sonja Sekula became acquainted with Alice Rahon, with whom she had a passionate affair for several months during 1945. After Rahon, who was still married to artist Wolfgang Paalen, ended their relationship, Sekula wrote to her about her efforts to transform her frustrated desire into paintings.

In 1947, Alice and Paalen divorced and she named herself Rahon, married the Canadian Edward Fitzgerald. However, this relationship ended several years later after the two worked on a film together.[14] From then, Rahon's social life revolved around friends in various artistic, intellectual and foreign exile circles, which she had begun in Europe. By the 1950s, these friendships included Rufino Tamayo, Carlos Mérida, Octavio Paz, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Henry Moore, Gordon Onslow Ford and his wife, along with Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She also maintained contacts with groups of artists in New York and California.[14][15] After her death, a record she kept of these people's lives and deaths was found.[16] She also continued to travel frequently, in part because of her art exhibits in the United States and Mexico but she also visited many cities in Mexico and spent long periods in Acapulco. One reason for this was that she was a strong swimmer despite her physical problems, moving more comfortably in the water than on land.[14] In 1967, she had another accident, this time falling down stairs at the opening of a show at the Galería Pecanins in Mexico City. This time, she injured her spine, but she refused medical treatment, stating that doctors had tortured her enough as a child. The injury caused her to become a recluse. She was the subject of an exhibit at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1975, and a retrospective at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1986,[17] but for the last years of her life, she lived practically in seclusion in her house in Tlaquepaque, visited by only a few friends such as Eva Sulzer and American professor Wayne Siewart, whom she had known since the 1950s.[4][15][18] She lived surrounded by mementoes of her life, including books signed by the likes of Breton, Paul Éluard, poems by Picasso, letters from Henry Moore and Anaïs Nin, paintings dedicated by Yves Tanguy and Paalen, and old photographs and souvenirs.[19][20] By 1987, she could no longer take care of herself in her home and was placed in a nursing home. Refusing food, she died four months later in September 1987.[21]

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