Surrealism turns 100 years old. See the fabulous paintings that made this movement so revolutionary

In October 1924, the French writer Andre Breton published what is now known as Surrealist manifesto. The seminal text, which argued for a new style of art and literature that would be “free from all control by reason, free from aesthetic and moral concerns,” helped give rise to a new avant-garde movement that spread throughout the world.

Now, to mark the manifesto’s 100th anniversary, a new exhibition in Paris explores the enduring global influence of surrealism. called “Surrealism“, the exhibition includes more than 500 artifacts and works of art, including poetry, drawings, sculptures and paintings.

Pages from Breton’s original handwritten manuscript are also featured in the exhibition, thanks to a loan from them. French National Library. To bring the historical document to life, the museum collaborated with Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music create an artificial intelligence recording of Breton reading it aloud.

The show originally opened in Brussels in February and is currently on display at the Pompidou Center in Paris. After he leaves France next year, he will move to Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia. There are a total of five institutions hosting the exhibition, but each museum takes its own unique curatorial approach.

“I hope people will understand that surrealism is a state of mind and a way of looking at things,” says Francisca Vandepiet, curator of the exhibition at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. New York Times“Nina Segal. “This is not something theoretical and very complicated. Core strength is something we all know. It’s irrational, it’s our dreams, and it’s liberating.”

In Paris, the exhibition presents surrealism as a global movement, not just a European one. Although the movement originated in France, its core principles, including “challenging rationality, embracing the unconscious, and exploring alternative realities,” resonated with a diverse group of artists from different backgrounds and cultures, writes ArtnetThis is Sofia Hallström.

“It is important to remember that surrealism was a movement that spread – and this is an exceptional phenomenon for an avant-garde movement – throughout the world, in Europe, but also in the United States, South America, Asia and the Maghreb countries,” Marie Sarre, who, together with Deputy Museum director Didier Ottinger curated the exhibition at the Pompidou Center, says GuardianJennifer Rankin.

The exhibition features works by such famous artists as Salvador Dali And Rene Magritteas well as works by lesser-known surrealists such as the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo and Japanese artist Tatsuo Ikeda. The Pompidou Center also sheds light on often overlooked women in the surrealist movement, including Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington And Dora Maar.

Arranged in a spiral pattern and divided into 13 sections, the exhibition also explores themes such as anti-colonialism and environmentalism. The curators hope to attract a younger audience who may not be familiar with surrealism but may share some of its core beliefs.

Many young museum visitors have become “disillusioned with the idea of ​​progress and modernism,” Sarre says. Art newspaperDale Berning Sawa. “They are politically and environmentally engaged, anti-colonialist, anti-nationalist – in that sense it echoes what the surrealists did.”

All the while, the surrealists were also having a lot of fun, as Jonathan Jones notes in his review for Guardian.

“Of all the modernist artistic movements, it was the surrealists who enjoyed their revolution best,” he writes. “In the beautifully judged Pompidou exhibition, this pleasure comes through when you meet these artists, now dead, not so much giants of art history as extremely funny fellows.”

“Surrealism» exposed Pompidou Center in Paris until January 13, 2025.

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