A Surrealist painter whose artistic vision is equally visible in her literary works, Dorothea Tanning established a solid dialogue between literature and the plastic arts. The corpus of her literary oeuvre is rather small, consisting of a novel, a volume of poetry and her memoir, Between Lives. This paper argues that Tanning can be regarded as an exemplary author of a creative transfer between verbal and plastic imagination. It also explores the tension between the two means of expression, most visible in her novel Chasm: A Weekend. Here, the imagery and enigmatic symbolism of her painting come to life in the story of a strange little girl called Destina Meridian.

Dorothea Tanning’s longstanding interest in the maternal element completes the artist’s complex relationship to femininity and the female experience, turning them into essential themes in her oeuvre. I shall explore the particular manner in which the American Surrealist integrates and transforms the notion of motherhood in her art. I shall also argue that Tanning’s works as a writer offer an original insight into this cardinal theme in western art, as she dismantles common tropes and refashions them into a new, unusual language.