You may know Salvador Dalí’s striking surrealist tarot deck, or surrealist frontman André Breton’s mysterious novel Arcane 17, inspired by The Star card. Perhaps you’ve seen Leonora Carrington’s recently discovered tarot designs, found in Mexico in 2018 and now captivating audiences worldwide. But these well-known examples only hint at a much deeper story: the surprisingly rich and complex relationship between Surrealism and the tarot.
Did the surrealists actually use tarot for divination, or were the cards simply another playground for their radical imagination? Which historical decks captured their attention? And why did several surrealist artists—from celebrated figures to lesser-known innovators—feel compelled to create their own interpretations of the arcana?
Published by Fulgur Press, Surrealism and the Tarot is the first book to explore these questions in depth. This groundbreaking and extensively illustrated collection brings together leading scholars to illuminate a fascinating but understudied aspect of surrealist practice. At tonight’s presentation, two contributing authors, along with the publisher and editor—all experts in their field—will offer insights into their discoveries before opening up a conversation with the audience about how tarot functioned within surrealist circles.
Topics include stories of international surrealists such as Penny Slinger, Ithell Colquhoun and Valentine Penrose to Victor Brauner, Jorge Camacho, and Kay Sage; the surprising ways tarot cards appeared in surrealist films, artworks, literature, and manifestos; and how surrealists from the 1920s to today have reimagined the tarot’s archetypal imagery.
Whether you’re drawn to surrealist art, fascinated by tarot, or curious about the unexpected connections between the avant-garde and esotericism, this presentation will open your eyes to a hidden chapter in cultural history.
Organised by Dr Will Atkin and Dr Tessel M. Bauduin, and supported by Dr Caroline Levitt, Senior Lecturer, The Courtauld.
Speakers:
Dr Tessel M. Bauduin is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam. She originally trained as a medievalist but has specialised in modernism and avant-garde art, culture, and heritage for twenty years, with particular expertise in Surrealism. Based at the University of Amsterdam, she teaches Museum Studies, Heritage Studies, and Memory Studies. Her current research focuses on critical heritage ecologies, the decolonization of museum collections (especially modernist collections), and surrealist curiosity cabinets. Dr. Bauduin has served on the Board of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism since 2022 and was awarded a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship to the UK in 2023. Her edited volume Surrealism and the Tarot will be published by Fulgur Press in October 2025.
Robert Shehu-Ansell is a publisher and independent scholar. He co-edited Abraxas: An International Journal of Esoteric Studies (with Christina Oakley-Harrington, 2009–14), the Black Mirror series (with Judith Noble, Victoria Ferentinou, Jesse Bransford, and Dominic Shepherd, Fulgur Press, 2014–19), and Magic Art (with Merlin Cox, Fulgur Press, 2024).
Dr Felicity Gee is Associate Professor of Modernist Literatures and Avant-Garde Studies at the University of Exter. She is author of Magic Realism, World Cinema and the Avant-Garde (Routledge, 2021), and has published widely on Surrealism, world literatures, and affect theory, including articles on Claude Cahun, Luis Buñuel, Leonora Carrington, René Magritte and Alain Robbe-Grillet, Kōbō Abe, and Raúl Ruiz. She is interested in women writers as philosophers, feminist and queer activism, and issues of social justice and mental health. Her current research is focused on the surrealist poet and artist Valentine Penrose, and explores a transnational and intermedial approach to her Sapphic, occult, and philosophical oeuvre.
Dr Will Atkin is a Teaching Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. He is an Art Historian specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European art history. His research has focused on discourses of magic and occultism and the legacies of Romanticism in the twentieth century, as matters that underpin the art and writing of the Surrealist Movement. He is the author of several publications on aspects of the history of the Surrealist Movement, including the book Surrealist Sorcery: Objects, Theories and Practices of Magic in the Surrealist Movement (Bloomsbury, 2023). He received his PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2017, and was previously awarded his BA and MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Nottingham 2020–2023.
About the book:
Surrealism and the Tarot: A Love Story (Fulgur Press, 2025), Edited by Tessel M. Bauduin.
Contributors include: Susan Aberth, Tere Arcq, Will Atkin, Emily E. Auger, Tessel M. Bauduin, Victoria Ferentinou, Anne Foucault, Felicity Gee, Jennifer Jäger, Elliott H. King, Claudia Mesch, Judith Noble, Michael Richardson, Robert Shehu-Ansell, Abigail Susik, Paulina Caro Troncoso, and Daniel Zamani.