Nusch Éluard

Nicknamed “Nusch” by artist Max Bill, she was a French performer, model and surrealist artist. In 1930 she met the poet Paul Éluard working as a model. They married him in 1934. She produced surrealist photomontage and other works, and is the subject of “Facile,” a collection of Éluard’s poetry published as a photogravure book, illustrated with Man Ray’s nude photographs of her. Later she was the subject of several cubist portraits and sketches by Pablo Picasso in the late 1930s with whom she had an affair. Nusch worked for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II and died suddenly in 1946 in Paris, collapsing in the street due to a massive stroke.