Kurt Leopold Seligmann (20 July 1900, Basel – 2 January 1962, Sugar Loaf) was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter, engraver, and occultist.

[1] He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights in macabre rituals and inspired by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.

[5][7] Though his parents did not initially support his desire to be an artist, they eventually relented and he began studying at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva in 1919.

[10] Over the course of his ten years in Paris, he made a number of friends, including Wolfgang Paalen, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, and Swiss artists Serge Brignoni and Gérard Vulliamy.

Courthion wrote a positive review of his work in the journal Cahiers de Belgiques and Arp subsequently invited him first to his studio, then to join the group Abstraction-Création.

Seligmann served on the executive board, as secretary, and finally as president Auguste Herbin's "right hand man" until the organization's dissolution in 1936.

Hans Bellmer, Jacques Hérold, Óscar Domínguez, and Richard Oelze were others in his class of inductees; he then met existing members Jean Hélion, and Alberto Magnelli.

[10][3] In 1944, he produced a limited edition set of etchings illustrating the myth of Oedipus in collaboration with friend and art historian Meyer Schapiro.

[20][7] He also taught summer courses in graphic techniques from his farm in Sugar Loaf[5] and designed sets for dance and ballet groups.

He gave up his Bryant Park studio and Manhattan apartment by 1960, apprehensive about his health and refusing to drive out of fear of having another heart attack, and spend the next two years painting and gardening on his Sugar Loaf farm.

[5][17][7] Seligmann dated English painter Ivy Langton for a time starting in 1932 before meeting Arlette Paraf during a summer trip to Geneva in 1935.

[11][7] On the morning of 2 January 1962, while shooting at rats stealing birdseed from his yard, Seligmann slipped on ice and accidentally shot himself in the head, fatally.