Early Life and the Seeds of Surrealism Dorothea Margaret Tanning, born August 25, 1910, in Galesburg, Illinois, emerged from a lineage of Swedish immigrants, inheriting a quiet fortitude that would subtly underpin her boldly imaginative art. Her childhood wasn’t one of conventional artistic nurturing; rather, it was marked by an unconventional education and a precocious independence. Skipping two grades proved formative, though she later confessed to a lifelong struggle with arithmetic—a curious counterpoint to the complex symbolic calculations within her paintings. A brief stint at Knox Col…