Nusch Éluard
French performer, model and surrealist artist and second wife of Paul Éluard (1906–1946)
Nusch Éluard (born Maria Benz; 21 June 1906 – 28 November 1946) was a French performer, model and surrealist artist.
Born Maria Benz in Mulhouse (then part of the German Empire), she met Swiss architect and artist Max Bill in the Odeon Café in Zürich; he nicknamed her "Nusch", a name she would stick to. Their liaison ended after six months when Max Bill's plan to marry her in order to avoid her pending extradition from Switzerland was vetoed by his father (to whom he owed a substantial amount of money due to medical expenses following an accident which had forced him to leave the Bauhaus).
Paris
In Paris, on May 21, 1930, in Galeries Lafayette on the boulevard Haussmann, Nusch, then an extra at the Grand Guignol, met Paul Éluard with René Char, both of whom later offer her croissants in the café at the corner of the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin and Boulevard Haussmann. Paul Éluard brought her home.
In 1937, at the early summer, Roland Penrose rented his brother's house at Lambe Creek in Cornwall, on the shore of the Truro River, across from Malpas, Cornwall. Penrose was joined by Lee Miller, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Man Ray, Ady Fidelin, Paul Éluard, Nusch Éluard, E.L.T. Mesens, Eileen Agar, Joseph Bard and Henry Moore.
Nusch arrived in France as a stage performer, variously described as a small-time actress, a traveling acrobat, and a "hypnotist's stooge". She met Paul Éluard in 1934 working as a model, married him four months later, produced surrealist photomontage and other work, and is the subject of "Facile," a collection of Éluard's poetry published as a photogravure book, illustrated with Man Ray's nude photographs of her.
She was also the subject of several cubist portraits and sketches by Pablo Picasso in the late 1930s, and is said to have had an affair with him.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nusch Éluard” as french performer, model and surrealist artist and second wife of Paul Éluard (1906–1946). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as french performer, model and surrealist artist and second wife of Paul Éluard (1906–1946). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q90635. VIAF identifies the subject as 10113266. The Library of Congress control number is no2011005735. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1946, 1930 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nusch Éluard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.