Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (20 October 1889 – 11 September 1963) was a French Dadaist painter, collagist, sculptor, and draughtsman. Her work was significant to the development of Paris Dada and modernism and her drawings and collages explore fascinating gender dynamics. Because she was a woman in the male-dominated Dada movement, she was rarely considered an artist in her own right. She was constantly overshadowed by her famous older brothers, who were also artists, or was often reduced to being described simply as "the wife of" fellow artist Jean Crotti. Her work in painting turns out to be significantly influential to the landscape of Dada in Paris and to the interests of women in Dada. She took a large role as an avant-garde artist, working through a career that spanned five decades, during a turbulent time of great societal change. She used her work to express certain subject matter such as personal concerns about modern society, her role as a modern woman artist, and the effects of the First World War. Her work often weaves painting, collage, and language together in complex ways.
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Early life and education
Suzanne was born in Blainville-Crevon, Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie Region of France, near Rouen. She was the fourth of six children born into the artistic family of Justin Isidore (Eugène) Duchamp (1848–1925) and Marie Caroline Lucie Duchamp (née Nicolle) (1860–1925), the daughter of painter and engraver Émile Frédéric Nicolle.
Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti was the younger sister of famous artists Jacques Villon (né Émile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp), a painter and printmaker, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, a sculptor, and Marcel Duchamp, a painter, sculptor and author. She was closest in age and temperament to Marcel Duchamp, forming and maintaining a close bond and emotional attachment with him throughout their lives. Scholars, such as Arturo Schwarz, have speculated that there may have been an incestuous relationship between the two, although that was influenced by Freudian school of thought at the time.