International Surrealist Exhibition

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The International Surrealist Exhibition was an exhibition of surrealist artists held at the New Burlington Galleries, Burlington Gardens, W.1 in London from June 11 to July 4, 1936 , and which was the first exhibition to introduce Surrealism in England . It became a huge success, reached skeptical British audiences, and received international art reviews.

The exhibition

The organizers of the surrealist art exhibition were: Hugh Sykes Davies , David Gascoyne , Humphrey Jennings , Rupert Lee , Diana Brinton Lee , Henry Moore , Paul Nash , Roland Penrose , Herbert Read , ELT Mesens as well as André Breton , Paul Éluard , Georges Hugnet and Man Ray . According to Penrose, Wolfgang Paalen coordinated the transports from Paris and is said to have had the idea of ​​putting together and designing a portfolio with original drawings by well-known surrealists, which was to be sold in the London exhibition for 1,000 francs in order to finance surrealist publications.

The success of the exhibition was reflected in the number of visitors. The lines at the entrance desk were so long on opening day that traffic on Piccadilly came to a standstill. Over 30,000 visitors came during the three-week exhibition. In addition to the exhibited works, the organizers offered lectures on the theories and intentions of Surrealism. 392 works by 58 artists from 14 countries were shown, including Constantin Brâncuși , Salvador Dalí , Marcel Duchamp , Alberto Giacometti , Paul Klee , René Magritte , Joan Miró , Wolfgang Paalen, Francis Picabia , Pablo Picasso , Man Ray and Max Ernst . Among the surrealist objects were Meret Oppenheim's Breakfast in Pelz and Wolfgang Paalen's first Fumage Dictated by a Candle .

The catalog accompanying the exhibition contained contributions by André Breton, the theoretician of the surrealist group, translated by David Gascoyne, and by Herbert Read , currently the best-known British art historian.

The following lectures accompanied the exhibition program:

  • June 16 - André Breton: "Limites non Frontières du Surréalisme"
  • June 19 - Herbert Read: "Art and the Unconscious"
  • June 24th - Paul Éluard: "La Poésie Surréaliste"
  • June 26 - Hugh Sykes Davies: "Biology and Surrealism"
  • July 1st - Salvador Dalí: "Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques"

Salvador Dalí's lecture caused a stir. He wore a deep-sea diving suit during his speech, carried a pool stick and was accompanied by two borzoi . The speech was about a philosophy student who ate a cloakroom and mirror over a period of six months. It was Gascoyne who freed Dalí from the helmet in which he could hardly be heard during his speech and threatened to suffocate.

In September 1936 the International Surrealist Bulletin , Number 4, published by the British surrealist group, appeared with photo portraits and contributions from the exhibiting artists and organizers.

The following exhibitions in the 1930s

The London Surrealist Exhibition was followed in May of the same year by the Exposition Surréaliste d'Objets at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris . This placed special emphasis on object art and referred to primitivism , fetishes and mathematical models. These exhibitions still had the usual form of presentation. The Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris followed in 1938 , in which Breton in the gallery Beaux-Arts of surrealist art created a framework for the first time in which the presentation itself could be regarded as a surrealist production.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Lara Thompson: The Surrealist Exhibition, London. Retrieved December 19, 2010
  2. ↑ "In answer to your letter of August 26 mentioning the album of surrealist drawings put together in 1936, all I can say is that I remember very well such an album having been got together during the exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries in June 1936 and put on sale at a price which would now seem ridiculously low for publications of members of the surrealist group. I believe it was Wolfgang Paalen who had the idea and got artists to give him drawings for the portfolio. ”Roland Penrose, letter to Frances Carey, 16 Sept. 1982, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Library, Archive and Special Books Collection, Valentine and Roland Penrose papers; See also correspondence between Roland Penrose and Paalen on organizational issues, ibid.
  3. ↑ Candida Ridler: www.bl.uk The David Gascoyne Notebook. (PDF; 105 kB) accessed on December 19, 2010
  4. ^ Silvano Levy: The Scandalous Eye: The Surrealism of Conroy Maddox. Liverpool University Press 2003, ISBN 0-85323-559-7 .
  5. ^ Candida Ridler: Transcription of British Library podcast. (PDF; 105 kB) In: Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900–1937. British Library, accessed September 15, 2012 .
  6. ^ Cover of the bulletin
  7. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Exposition international du Surréalisme, Paris 1938. In: Bernd Klüser, Katharina Hegewisch (ed.): The art of exhibition. A documentation of thirty exemplary art exhibitions of this century. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-458-16203-8 , p. 94.
  8. ↑ Volker Zotz : Breton. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-499-50374-3 , p. 109.

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 35.1 ″  N , 0 ° 8 ′ 27.6 ″  W.