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"An exhibition now on view at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis shows the work of a pair of artists who fought Nazi Germany with paper bullets.
It’s the term Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore used for the scraps of paper on which they wrote statements criticizing the Nazi war effort while living on Jersey, the small island in the English Channel that became the only British territory occupied by Germany during World War II.
Cahun and Moore slipped the notes between pages of newspapers and magazines, into the briefcases of strangers and perhaps even into the coat pockets of unsuspecting Nazi soldiers living on the island. Their goal was to sow discontent in the ranks.
They were ultimately caught.
'The German war tribunal that brought charges against them couldn’t believe it was these two women who had actually done this — two gray-haired ladies who were being helped across the street by a Nazi soldier,' said Dean Daderko, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis’ Ferring Foundation chief curator.
Daderko and visiting historian Svetlana Kitto organized 'And I Saw New Heavens and a New Earth: The Partnership, Art and Activism of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,'on view through Aug. 9.
The heart of Cahun and Moore’s body of work is a series of photo portraits, mostly of Cahun, that the women collaborated on throughout their lifelong romance and artistic partnership.
As queer women living together in 1920s and ‘30s Paris, working among the early surrealists before seeking refuge in Jersey, Cahun and Moore defied social norms and artistic expectations. Little of their work was made public during their lifetimes, and only in recent decades have art historians grappled with its importance.
Much of the art world discussion has assumed the artistic centrality of Cahun, who published writings about art matters. Curators of the CAM exhibition emphasize the work as the product of a true collaboration.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin spoke with Daderko and Kitto about Cahun and Moore’s life together as life partners and artists, their resistance efforts during the war and Cahun’s flexible understanding of gender.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity."
https://www.stlpr.org/arts/2026-03-24/cam-show-photos-two-women-defied-gender-norms-nazis
Seldom-seen photos by 2 women who defied gender norms and Nazis are on display at St. Louis museum
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is showing the work of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, two women whose lifelong romance fueled their photographic collaboration and stealth campaign to undermine occupying Nazi troops during World War II.
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