Manina

Manina (born Marianne Tischler, 1918–2010) was raised in pre-war Paris as the daughter of Expressionist painter Viktor Tischler, and at eighteen became a muse to photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. Fleeing rising antisemitism in France, she left for Los Angeles in 1938, remaining in the United States for over a decade before returning to Europe.

She exhibited at New York's Hugo Gallery alongside René Magritte in 1951, and André Breton famously called her "a born Surrealist." In 1952, she settled permanently in Venice, where she developed a semi-figurative visual language built on recurring motifs such as eggs, shells, suns, serpents, and hybrid bird-human forms drawn from the city's art and architecture. She was included in the Venice Biennale in 1964 and 1986, and co-founded Group AZ, Italy's only Surrealist association, in 1975.