Susana Wald and Surrealist Publishing. Design and Production by The Philosophical Egg

Abstract

The following article analyzes the serie El Huevo Filosófico/The Philosophical Egg, a magazine that circulated by mail between 1980 and 1990, disseminating surrealist texts and images. The nine issues of the magazine were published under the editorial seal of Oasis Publications, a publishing project initiated by Susana Wald (1937) and Ludwig Zeller (1927- 2019) during their stay in Toronto, Canada. This article offers a general review of the authors and works published in the collection, as well as a series of observations on paratextual and material aspects of the printed materials.

This pursues two interrelated objectives: first, to characterize the publication of the Philosophical Egg as a case of surrealist editing and design, understood as an avant-garde experience in itself; second, to trace the professional career of Susana Wald in Canada, with a focus on her editorial work and her international relations with the surrealist movement in the post-war period, fifty years after André Breton’s first manifesto.