Abstract

This dissertation is a monograph on the Viennese artist and theorist, Wolfgang Paalen, covering his life, theories, art, and times. Part I reconstructs Paalen's biography and his emergence as an artist in Europe. Parts II and III serve as background for Paalen's primitivism and relationship to the art and culture of the Northwest Coast and pre-Columbian America, and Mexican modernism. Part IV examines his relationship to and influence on theExpressionist movement through his "little magazine" DYN published in Mexico City during his exile in World War II, from 1942-1944: and through his paintings and other artworks, exhibited in New York throughout the 1940s