PARIS.- Retracing over 40 amazingly creative, effervescent years, from 1924 to 1969, the "Surrealism" exhibition celebrates the centenary of a movement born in 1924 with the publication of André Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme.
Adopting a spiral or labyrinth layout, the exhibition radiates out from a central "drum" containing the original manuscript of the Manifeste du surréalisme, specially loaned out from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. An immersive audiovisual projection sheds light on its origins and meaning. The exhibition has been laid out chronologically and thematically, with 13 sections referring to the literary figures that inspired the movement (Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll and Sade, to name but a few), as well as the myths that lend structure to its poetic imaginary world (psychic artists, dreams, the philosopher's stone, the forest etc.).
True to the multi-disciplinary principle of exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, the "Surrealism" exhibition features paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents. It presents the iconic works of the movement, loaned by the main international public and private collections: The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dalí (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), Personal Values by René Magritte (SFMoMA, San Francisco), The Child's Brain (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), Song of Love (MoMA, New York) by Giorgio de Chirico, The Large Forest by Max Ernst (Kunstmuseum, Basel), Dog Barking at the Moon by Joan Miró (Philadelphia Museum of Art), etc.
The exhibition gives considerable place to the many women who took part in the movement, with works by Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Ithell Colquhoun, Dora Maar and Dorothea Tanning. It also documents the movement's global expansion, displaying the works of many international artists such as Tatsuo Ikeda (Japan), Helen Lundeberg (USA), Wilhelm Freddie (Denmark), Rufino Tamayo (Mexico) and others..