ARTISTS
But Live Here? No Thanks: Surrealism And Anti-fascism
Surrealism was a political movement of international reach and internationalist conviction. While it had its origins in art and literature, it far exceeded both. Surrealists declared reality to be insufficient. Their ambition was to radically alter society and reimagine life. They wrote poems, worked on paintings and collective drawings, took photographs, assembled collages, and organized exhibitions—all of which were aimed at disarticulating a supposedly rational language in a supposedly rational world.
The exhibition at Lenbachhaus is conceived as a bundling of attempts to revise a still narrowly defined and politically trivialized Surrealist canon. Our goal is to arrive, together with our public, at new answers to the question, “What is Surrealism?”
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Surrealism was a political movement of international reach and internationalist conviction. While it had its origins in art and literature, it far exceeded both. Surrealists declared reality to be insufficient. Their ambition was to radically alter society and reimagine life. They wrote poems, worked on paintings and collective drawings, took photographs, assembled collages, and organized exhibitions—all of which were aimed at disarticulating a supposedly rational language in a supposedly rational world.
The exhibition at Lenbachhaus is conceived as a bundling of attempts to revise a still narrowly defined and politically trivialized Surrealist canon. Our goal is to arrive, together with our public, at new answers to the question, “What is Surrealism?”
Artists on show
- Aimé Césaire
- Amy Nimr
- André Breton
- André Masson
- Antonio Recalcati
- Art & Liberté
- Chicago Surrealists
- China Miéville
- Claude Cahun
- Die Badewanne
- Dora Maar
- Dyno Lowenstein
- Enrico Baj
- Erich Kahn
- Erwin Blumenfeld
- Esteban Francés
- Eugenio Fernández Granell
- Georges Bataille
- Germaine Krull
- Gianni Dova
- Groupe Octobre
- Gudmundur Gudmundsson
- Hans Bellmer
- Heinz Lohmar
- Jacques Hérold
- Jayne Cortez
- Jean-Jacques Lebel
- Jindrich Heisler
- Jindrich Styrsky
- Joan Miller
- Joan Miró
- John Heartfield
- Karel Teige
- Kati Horna
- Laura Corsiglia
- Lee Miller
- Leonora Carrington
- Manuel Álvarez Bravo
- Marcel Moore
- Marion Kalter
- Max Ernst
- Meta Erna Niemeyer
- Oscar Dominguez
- Pablo Picasso
- Paul Eluard
- Pierre Jahan
- Raoul Ubac
- Remedios Varo
- René Magritte
- Robert Desnos
- Roberto Crippa
- Roberto Matta
- Ronald Penrose
- Suzanne Césaire
- Ted Joans
- Toyen
- Victor Brauner
- Wifredo Lam
- Wolfgang Paalen
- Wols
- Yves Tanguy
Related articles
In 1924, amid the wreckage of the Great War, French poet André Breton railed against the values of the world as it was and could never again be, one ruled by realism and rationality.
Surrealism was a political movement of international reach and internationalist conviction. While it had its origins in art and literature, it far exceeded both. Surrealists declared reality to be insufficient.
Dismissed or trivialised by some as unserious and silly, Surrealist art was in fact largely born out of the brutal trauma of living under fascism, as these five striking works reveal.
The influence of Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious on Surrealism is widely known.
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