Irène Zurkinden

Irène Zurkinden began her artistic training as a fashion designer in the general trade school in Basel, where she incidentally also attended drawing, painting and graphics courses. A scholarship enabled her to stay in Paris in 1929. Here she enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere and made contact with Meret Oppenheim and the Surrealists.

From 1942 she was involved in the Gruppe 33, an anti-fascist association established in 1933 by the Basel artists with whom they variously presented in the following exhibitions. In addition to her work as a portraitist, Irène Zurkinden also designed costumes, stage scenery and decorations for the Stadttheater Basel.