Unica Zürn was raised in an affluent Berlin family, but her parents’ divorce forced her to leave school early. In 1933, she was em ployed as a typist in the Universum Film AG (UFA) studios, later becoming a film editor and starting to write. Married in 1942, she divorced seven years later, leaving custody of her two children, born during the war, to the father. She earned a living writing serials for newspapers and a few radio plays.
In 1953, her encounter with artist Hans Bellmer was pivotal: she left everything to follow him to Paris. He introduced her to auto matic drawing and encouraged her to create anagram-drawings such as Hexentexte (Witches’ Texts). Her first exhibition in Paris was in 1956 at Galerie Le Soleil dans la tête. Zürn drew intensively for the following two years. Her hybrid plant-animal creatures fascinated for their perpetual metamorphosis, making them almost indefinable.
In 1960, affected by difficulties in her relationship with Bellmer, she experienced her first hallucinatory crisis and was institutiona lized. She spent most of the last ten years of her life in psychiatric hospitals. Despite long depressive periods, she continued to draw and write (e.g., The Man of Jasmine). She ended her life in 1970.