Marie Wilson

Marie Wilson (1922–2017) was an American surrealist painter.

Early life and education Wilson was born in 1922 in Cedarville, California. She attended Mills College in the San Francisco Bay Area where she received a BFA degree in 1944. She went on to pursue a graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, earning an MFA in 1948. Through these professional relationships, she became engaged with the Dynaton movement and its associated intellectual community. Wilson's semi-abstract paintings incorporated geometric and biomorphic formal elements. The compositions of her later work were highly symmetrical. It has been described as having "a transcendental artistic language that was uniquely her own: a poetic, masterful, and harmonious fusion of the sacred and the surreal."

In 2026, Wilson's work was presented in a solo exhibition at the San Francisco; it had been forty years since she had a solo exhibition.

The book, The Occult, in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema includes a chapter on Wilson's work.

Personal life Wilson met the Greek poet, Nanos Valaoritis in 1954, who introduced her to André Breton. They collaborated on a book project in 1958 Terre de Diamant, that included 16 of Wilson's lithographs with mandala motifs which were partnered with 16 poems by Valaoritis who wrote them in response to the imagery. They were married in 1960, and moved to Greece. The couple had three children, and in 1968 moved to Oakland, California.

A selection of Wilson's papers, manuscripts, works and ephemera are held in the archives and collections of André Breton.