The little-known yet prominent Surrealist artist Rita Kerrn-Larsen was born in Denmark in 1904. After a period of study in The Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, she moved to Paris in 1929, where she became the pupil of Fernand Léger. Impeccably connected within the exciting ferment of pre-war Paris, Kerrn-Larsen and her husband, art dealer and journalist Isaac Grünberg, moved in exciting and experimental avant-garde circles. From 1935, her prominence within the Surrealist group was established and she exhibited widely in key group exhibitions throughout Europe, including the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 and the legendary, scandalising Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1938, where her work Self Portrait Know Thyself was exhibited alongside Salvador Dalí’s iconic work Lobster Telephone. In 1937 Kerrn-Larsen was introduced to iconic collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim, and in 1938 was awarded a solo exhibition in her fledging London gallery Guggenheim Jeuneon Cork Street.

Bouquet de tulipes is a vibrant and striking example of the artist’s investigation into a cubist sensibility. Here, she plays with the ideas of perspective and form, by placing the bouquet in an apparently two-dimensional room, created by layering blocks of colour. Kernn-Larsen juxtaposes the curved, elegant flowers with angled, rectangular forms in the flattened background, infusing the still-life with energy. The deep mauve of the flowers and the cool green leaves are dynamic and lively in their arrangement, and sit right on the edge of the seemingly floating table, imbuing the work with tension and suspense.

Kerrn-Larsen’s position as a female artist in the largely male Surrealist movement gives her works a unique importance for a study of the period, and her work, often overlooked in the traditional narratives and accounts of the period, are an indispensable part of continuing studies into Surrealism. Kerrn-Larsen’s works are today housed in international collections, including in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, among others. Most recently, Kerrn-Larsen's Surrealist paintings have been the subject of an exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, February - June 2017. On 24 June 2016, La promenade dangereuse (1936) was sold in these Rooms, and is now in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.