Surréalisme

Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September 2024 - 13 January 2025

Defined by André Breton in 1924 in his Manifesto, Surrealism developed over a period of more than 40 years, touching all areas of the arts: visual arts, literature, music, cinema, etc. This movement, which grew out of Dadaism, helped to spread psychoanalysis by using Sigmund Freud's theories on dreams and the unconscious.

Reflecting the labyrinthine aspirations of the Surrealists, this catalogue of the exhibition organised to mark the centenary of the Surrealist movement combines paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents. It presents 250 works by emblematic artists of the movement, including Dalí, Magritte, Chirico, Ernst, Miró, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun and Dora Maar.

The book offers a poetic overview of Surrealism, reviewing the principles that structure its imagination, such as dreams, chimeras, the cosmos, etc., and evokes the literary figures who inspired the movement - Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Sade, etc. Supported by extracts from Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, it also presents the political development of the movement, in 8 major stages from 1924 to 1968.