Greta Knutson

Greta Knutson, also known as Greta Knutson-Tzara (1899–1983), was a Swedish modernist visual artist, art critic, short story writer, and poet. A student of André Lhote who adopted Abstraction, Cubism and Surrealism, she was also noted for her interest in phenomenology. Knutson was married to Romanian-born author and co-founder of Dadaism Tristan Tzara, but they later divorced.

Biography Born in Stockholm, Greta Knutson was a Swedish surrealist painter, art critic, poet, and writer. She was born to an affluent family in 1899 and was fluent in several foreign languages. She attended the Carl Wilhelmson Academy of Fine Arts for one year, It was there that she began frequenting Andre Lhote's studio and became his disciple. She married him on 8 August 1925. The couple had a son, Christophe, born on 15 March 1927, at Neuilly-sur-Seine. With funds from her inheritance, Tzara built the family residence in Montmartre, commissioned to architect Adolf Loos (a former figure of the Modernist Movement in Vienna). She partly modified the structure to accommodate her personal studio, which Loos had omitted in his original design. (they were pronounced divorced on 25 October 1942).

Knutson was a productive writer, publishing essays of art criticism, and, only sporadically, poems. She wrote in both Swedish and French. Late in her life, she also authored novellas and prose poetry fragments. Together with poet Gunnar Ekelöf, she translated works of Swedish literature into French, but her own poetry was never issued as a volume during her lifetime. “The story of the cliffside path/Will be a path that licks the flagstone/Will lift its hand toward the iron/ Path to the broken porch shelter of the pursued/ night came morning gone/toward the gentle flock and the boat sleeping/ against the temple of the riverbank.”, an excerpt of her poem, translated from French, that originally was in Le Surrealisme ASDLR. She also had several solo art exhibits, notably one in Paris in 1929 and one in Stockholm in 1932.

Greta Knutson committed suicide in Paris in 1983.

Legacy Greta Knutson's French-language poems were translated into Swedish by poet Lasse Söderberg, and, together with her husband, she was the subject of a study by art historian Cecilia Sjöholm. Söderberg, Sjöholm, actor Christian Fex and writer Jonas Ellerström took part in the Madame Tzara? event, held at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Stockholm during October 2007.