This startling creature seems to have jumped out of the paper’s stark red diamond. It is one of a series of works that Catherine Yarrow made while resident at a psychiatric clinic in Morges on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. British-born Yarrow studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, graduating in 1925. Her subsequent life in Paris introduced her to many of the Surrealist artists. She became particularly close to Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) and Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966), of whom she drew a portrait in the same year this work was made. Yarrow’s use of collage allows the ‘long-eared creature’ to stand proud of the page, otherworldly with its sinuous body.