SURRE ALISM BE YOND

BORDERS
24 FEB – 29 AUG 2022

L ARGE PRINT GUIDE

CONTENTS

Concourse ...................................................................................... 3

Room 1 ........................................................................................... 5

Room 2 ..........................................................................................17

Room 3 ......................................................................................... 55

Room 4 ......................................................................................... 86

Room 5 ........................................................................................101

Room 6 ........................................................................................112

Room 7 ........................................................................................139

Room 8 ........................................................................................165

Room 9 ........................................................................................173

Room 10 ..................................................................................... 200

Room 11 ..................................................................................... 230

2
Concourse

SURRE ALISM BE YOND BORDERS

Exhibition organised by Tate Modern and The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York.

Curated by Matthew Gale, Senior Curator at Large, Tate

Modern and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder
Curator of Modern Art, and Senior Research Coordinator
in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Carine Harmand,
Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern

Interpretation: the exhibition curators, Hannah Geddes and

Elliott Higgs.

Surrealism Beyond Borders is presented in the

Eyal Ofer Galleries.

Supported by

With additional support from the Surrealism

Beyond Borders Exhibition Supporters Circle:

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Huo Family Foundation (UK) Limited
and those who wish to remain anonymous

Tate Americas Foundation,

Tate International Council,
Tate Patrons and Tate Members

Research supported by
HYUNDAI TATE RESEARCH CENTRE: TRANSNATIONAL

In partnership with

This exhibition has been made possible by the provision

of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme.
Tate would like to thank HM Government for providing
Government Indemnity and the Department for Digital,
Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for
arranging the indemnity.

Photography is allowed for personal, non-commercial use

only, unless otherwise indicated. Please do not use flash,
camera supports, or selfie sticks.

For more information about the exhibition events and to

book, visit tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888.

4
ROOM 1

5
Clockwise from room entrance

SURRE ALISM BE YOND BORDERS

A telephone receiver morphs into a lobster.

A train rushes from a fireplace.

These are images commonly associated with Surrealism,

a revolutionary cultural movement that prioritised the
unconscious and dreams, over the familiar and everyday.
Sparked in Paris around 1924, Surrealism has inspired and
united artists ever since. This exhibition traces its wide,
interconnected impact for the first time. It moves away
from a Paris-centred viewpoint to shed light on Surrealism’s
significance around the world from the 1920s to the 1970s.
It includes artists who embraced this spirit of revolt and
those who shared Surrealist ideas and values but never
joined a group. It features some who have intersected
with Surrealism at various points – working in parallel,
associated loosely or for a short period, or counted in by
other Surrealists.

Surrealism is an expansive, shifting term, but at its core, it is

an interrogation of political and social systems, conventions
and dominant ideologies. Inherently dynamic, it has

6
travelled and evolved from place to place and time to
time – and continues to do so today. Its scope has always
been transnational, spreading beyond national borders
and defying nationalist definitions, while also addressing
specific and local contexts. In a world defined by territorial
control – and the consequential ideological constraint,
expansionist conflict, and exploitative colonialism –
Surrealism has demanded liberation and served artists
as a tool in the struggle for political, social and personal
freedoms. The exhibition reflects this individualism by
avoiding nationalities. Instead, it highlights the centres
where Surrealists worked and gathered, recognising shared
practices and ideals even as territories and place names
changed around them.

The artworks assembled here reveal some, but certainly

not all, of the many routes into and through Surrealism.
Artworks are grouped in broad areas of Surrealist activity,
presenting collective interests and networks shared by
artists across regions at points of convergence, relay and
exchange. They also demonstrate individual challenges
witnessed in the pursuit of independence from colonialism,
as well as the experience of exile and displacement caused
by international conflict. Combining broad themes and
detailed points of focus across its sections, the exhibition is
neither singular in narrative nor linear in chronology. Instead,
it challenges conventional accounts that centre Surrealism in

7
Europe, presenting an interrelated network of activity – one
that makes visible many lives, locations, and encounters
linked through the freedom and possibility offered
by Surrealism.

Rooms 2, 3, 9, 10 and 11 have two sections indicated by

different wall colours.

8
Horacio Coppola
(Buenos Aires, Argentina 1906 - Buenos Aires,
Argentina 2012)
and Walter Auerbach
(Germany)
Directors

Traum (Sueño)
Dream

1933
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 16mm film,
black-and-white, silent

© Fundación Horacio Coppola, Courtesy of Galería Jorge

Mara – La Ruche
X83766

Coppola and Auerbach met at the Bauhaus art school in

Berlin, along with their partners, artists Grete Stern and Ellen
Rosenberg (who founded the photographic studio ringl+pit).
This short film represents their collective interlocking
interests. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany in
1933, Coppola and Stern moved to London and then Buenos
Aires. They would go on to contribute to Surrealism activities
there, initiated by the poet Aldo Pellegrini.

9
Dorothea Tanning
(Galesburg, Illinois US 1910 – New York, US 2012)
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
A Little Night Music

1943
Oil paint on canvas

A girl and a lifelike doll share the landing and staircase of

a hotel with a giant sunflower. Their tattered clothes and
the state of the oversized plant suggest the aftermath of a
nightmarish struggle. The unknown threat may have been
resisted, although the powerful force drawing the girl’s hair
up appears very active.

Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund and the

American Fund for the Tate Gallery 1997
T07346

10
Marcel Jean
(La Charite-sur-Loire, France 1900 –
Louveciennes, France 1993)

Armoire Surréaliste
Surrealist Wardrobe

1941
Oil paint on wood panel

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs

X79697

Jean’s Surrealist work imagines a portal to freedom, his

vision projected on the closed doors of a wardrobe. He
made this work two years into the Second World War,
while living in Budapest with his wife, Lily. They had been
running a textile design studio when, at the outbreak
of war, they found themselves unable to return home to
Paris. Already associated with Surrealism, he found the
movement provided greater political and poetic expression
at a time when restrictions were rising and Hungarian
nationalism increasing.

11
Wall text

DE SCHONE Z AKDOEK

For a cold of your body

a clean kerchief
For a cold of the mind
THE CLEAN KERCHIEF

This motto is taken from the journal De Schone Zakdoek (The

Clean Kerchief) produced by Gertrude Pape and Theo van
Baaren between April 1941 and February 1944 in Utrecht.
While not specifically associated with Surrealism, it aligned
with the movement’s practices. Collective activity was
key: the journal emerged from Monday-night gatherings
in Pape’s apartment with poets, authors, and artists.
Together they engaged in discussions, wrote poetry, made
collaborative drawings and objects, played games, and held
occasional séances.

They created the journal in secret during the German

wartime occupation. Each issue was made by hand as a
single copy. This meant they could continue to include new,
original artwork and avoid the possibility of censorship. By
March 1944, enforced curfews made the gatherings and the
production of the journal impossible. Several contributors
were forced into hiding from the Nazis, including Van Baaren,

12
who hid in Pape’s apartment to avoid Arbeitseinsatz (forced
labour internment). De Schone Zakdoek remained virtually
unknown for decades, even after the end of Nazi occupation.

13
Vitrine against wall

‘The editors’
(Gertrude Pape [Leeuwarden, Netherlands 1907 – Groningen,
Netherlands, 1988] and Theo van Baaren [Utrecht,
Netherlands 1912 – Groningen, Netherlands, 1987])

‘Beginselverduistering’ (Darkened Principles),

De Schone Zakdoek (The Clean Kerchief) 1, no. 1, Utrecht,
April 1941

1941–44
Black paper and ink on paper

In place of a manifesto, the first issue features a square

of black paper with the caption ‘Beginselverduistering’ a
pun that roughly means ‘darkened principles.’ It reflects
the precarious condition of underground activities when
many people were forced into hiding. It also represents
the realities of wartime existence when blackout paper in
windows helped to conceal homes during air raids.

Literatuurmuseum / Literature museum, The Hague

X79669

14
Clockwise from room entrance

Theo van Baaren

(Utrecht, Netherlands 1912 – Groningen, Netherlands 1987)
and Gertrude Pape
(Leeuwarden, Netherlands 1907 –
Groningen, Netherlands 1988)

Cover of De Schone Zakdoek (The Clean Kerchief) 1, no. 6,

Utrecht, September 1941
1941–44
Cigarette packets on paper

While most journals circulate in public, De Schone Zakdoek

was conceived, made, read, and kept privately in Pape’s
home. The group countered this restriction by creating
an international outlook. The did this by imaginatively
connecting its contributors and readers through contraband
from around the world (here, in the form of French and
American cigarette wrappers), translations, visual scraps
from foreign (usually British) journals, and poems, limericks,
and fragments in no fewer than 12 languages.

Literatuurmuseum / Literature museum, The Hague

X80912

15
Emiel van Moerkerken
(Haarlem, Netherlands 1916 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
1995)
and Chris van Geel
(Amsterdam, Netherlands 1917 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
1974)

Spread with photographs of lost objects, De Schone Zakdoek

(The Clean Kerchief) 1, no. 8/9, Utrecht, November–December
1941

1941–44
Gelatin silver prints and ink on paper

Surrealism never became a large or cohesive movement

in the Netherlands, but it did inspire artists in the 1930s,
including Van Moerkerken and Van Geel. They were
impressed and inspired by a 1938 exhibition of Surrealism
at Galerie Robert in Amsterdam. Both became involved in
De Schone Zakdoek, contributing poetry and photographs
of their Surrealist objects made from found materials.
Today, the journal illustrations are the only records of these
lost works.

Literatuurmuseum / Literature museum, The Hague

X80913

16
ROOM 2

17
Clockwise from room entrance

THE UNC ANNY IN THE E VERYDAY

‘The only thing that fanatically attracts me,’ wrote Jindřich

Štyrský in Prague in 1935, ‘is searching for surreality hidden
in everyday objects.’ This reflects Surrealism’s relationship
with the ‘uncanny’ – a familiar sight made disconcerting and
strange by the unexpected.

Alerted by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s writing on the

uncanny, Surrealist artists have tapped into the rich vein of
strangeness embedded in the ordinary world. Photography
proved particularly well suited to the project of recording
these accidental coincidences, repetitions, and hazards of
daily life. Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Dora Maar captured
surprising objects and scenes encountered through
chance. Others, including Raoul Ubac and Limb Eung-
sik, manipulated or staged images to convey a sense of
the uncanny.

With its potential to reveal hidden truths, the uncanny is

well suited to satire and political subversion. To this end,
photographic strategies of ‘defamiliarisation’ have been
employed to subvert reality and present everyday scenes in

18
strange or uncanny ways. This is seen in works shown here
by artists working in Belgrade, Bucharest, Lisbon, Mexico
City, Nagoya, Prague and Seoul, guaranteeing an ongoing
questioning of power and society, even in the face of
dire threats.

Dora Maar
(Paris, France 1907 – Paris, France 1997)

Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel)

1935
Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper

Here, people crowd at the windows of the mysteriously

named Sphinx Hotel. Maar captures their shared experience
without revealing what caught their attention. She may have
been attracted by the fact that a hotel of the same name
featured in André Breton’s book Nadja (1928).

Presented by Allard Jakobs and

Natascha Jakobs-Linssen 2020
P15122

19
Andreas Embirikos
(Braila, Romania 1901 – Kifisia, Greece 1975)

Elefsina (Eleusis)

1955
Gelatin silver print

A poet and the instigator of Surrealism in Athens, Embirikos

used his camera to register irony and humour. Elefsina
(Eleusis) picks out a clash of cultures – the fragmented
sculptures represent antiquity, while the chimney billowing
smoke suggests modernity.

Maria Margaronis
X81294

20
Jindřich Štyrský
(Prague, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1899 –
Prague, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1942)

Untitled
Untitled

1934
Photographs, gelatin silver prints on paper

These untitled photographs relate to the group later

published in the volume On the Needles of These Days
(shown in the vitrine nearby).

Tate. Purchased 2007

P79315, P79316

21
Vilém Reichmann
(Brno, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1908 –
Brno, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1991)

Hrůzy války (Horrors of War), also known as Broken Caryatid,

from the cycle Raněné město (Wounded City)

1945–1947
Gelatin silver print

Reichmann’s Raněné město (Wounded City) examines the

uncanny aspects of wartime damage that he encountered
unexpectedly while walking the streets. He belonged to the
Brno Surrealist group Ra, established during the German
occupation in 1942.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London (PH.92-1987)

X81419

22
Okanoue Toshiko
(born Kōchi, Japan 1928)

Yobi-goe
The Call

1953
Half-tone print collage

Okanoue’s fantastical collages use illustrated magazines

left at second hand bookshops during the US occupation
of Japan (1945–52). Her work was admired by the Surrealist
poet and artist Takiguchi Shūzō. It explores the daily
experience of post war Japan, newly flooded with foreign
commodities after wartime rationing, and altered by the
introduction of new political and social rights for women.

The Wilson Centre for Photography

X81417

23
Raoul Ubac
(Cologne, Germany 1910 – Dieudonné, France 1985)

Le Combat des Penthésilées

The Battle of the Amazons

1938
Gelatin silver print (solarisation)

Le Combat des Penthésilées is part of Ubac’s series of

photographic experiments. As well as superimposing
different negatives, he used solarisation during the
developing process, allowing light to erode the dark forms.
The resulting image suggests a petrified version of the Greek
myth, in which Achilles transgressively falls in love with
Penthesilea as he kills her.

Courtesy The Mayor Gallery, London

X81421

24
Fernando de Azevedo
(Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal 1923 – Lisbon, Portugal 2002)

Untitled (Ocultação)
Untitled (Occultation)

circa 1950–1951
Indian ink on print

Azevedo was drawn toward the Surrealist interest in the

occult as a way of disrupting conventions. Alongside writer
Alexandre O’Neill, he developed the technique of ocultação
(occultation) that involved obscuring parts of images with
black ink. This gave chance a major role in the process
to reveal unexpected forms and new realities. An artist,
art critic, and curator, Azevedo was one of the founding
members of the Grupo Surrealista de Lisboa (Surrealist Group
of Lisbon) in 1947, which held its first and only exhibition
in 1949.

CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

X79356

25
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
(Mexico City, Mexico 1902 – Mexico City, Mexico 2002)

Retrato de lo Eterno
Portrait of the Eternal

1935, printed c. 1980s

Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper

The dramatic shaft of light lends mystery to the everyday:

a woman in traditional Mexican clothes brushing her hair.
Alvarez Bravo participated in the Exposición Internacional
del Surrealismo at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1940,
and this photograph was published in the surrealist-related
periodical Dyn in November 1944.

Presented by Jane and Michael Wilson (Tate Americas

Foundation) 2017
P14826

26
Kati Horna
(Budapest, Hungary 1912 – Mexico City, Mexico 2000)

Oda a la necrofilia, Ciudad de México

Untitled from Ode to Necrophilia, Mexico City 1962
(Leonora Carrington)

1962, printed 1960s

Mujer con máscaras, (serie) México

Untitled from Woman with Masks (Series) Mexico

1963

Photographs, gelatin silver prints on paper

Kindly loaned by Michael Hoppen Gallery

X83700, X84045

The counter-cultural magazine S.nob, published in

Mexico City, showcased provocative photo-essays by
Horna featuring women only. For Ode to Necrophilia, the
artist Leonora Carrington is disguised under a mask for a
mysterious performance. While in Woman with Masks, we
see fellow artist Remedios Varo’s face reflected in the mirror.
For Horna, Carrington and Varo, Surrealism offered a route
and outlet for personal creative freedom.

27
Nikola Vučo
(Belgrade, Serbia 1902 – Belgrade, Yugoslavia [present-day
Belgrade, Serbia] 1993)

Zadržano bekstvo nadstvarnosti

The Arrested Flight of Surreality

1929
Gelatin silver print

Published in the Belgrade Surrealist Circle’s journal

Nemoguče / L’Impossible (The Impossible) in May 1930,
Vučo’s work was a pivotal image for the group. Here, Vučo’s
use of a double exposure creates an unsettling effect,
bringing together the front and back views of his sitter.
This echoes 19th-century spirit photography, a form of
image manipulation that was said to capture the ghosts of
loved ones.

Museum of Applied Art, Belgrade

X80898

28
Eileen Agar
(Buenos Aires, Argentina 1899 – London, UK 1991)

Rockface, Ploumanach

July 1936, printed 2021

Exhibition print

On a trip to France in July 1936, Agar discovered the striking

rock formations near Ploumanach. In their eroded forms, she
found faces, bodies and animals. She later described them
as ‘like enormous prehistoric monsters sleeping on the turf
above the sea’.

Tate Archive Photographic Collection

Z76057

29
Jorge Cáceres
(Santiago de Chile, Chile 1923 – Santiago de Chile, Chile 1949)

El Tratado del Fuego

The Treaty of Fire

1937–1938
Photocollage on black paper

A poet and collagist, Cáceres was part of the Santiago

de Chile Surrealist group Mandrágora (Mandrake). They
believed that they were affiliated with ‘the most vital
development in poetry, philosophy, and art.’ This work
was owned by Enrique Gomez-Correa, a cofounder of the
Mandrágora publication. Together with another editor of
the journal, Braulio Arenas, Cáceres organised Surrealist
exhibitions that became increasingly international in scope.

The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

X81413

30
Limb Eung-sik
(Busan, Korea [present-day South Korea] 1912 – Seoul, South
Korea 2001)

Jeongmul II
Still Life II

1949
Gelatin silver print

Limb made this photograph during the period between the

end of Japanese colonialism (1945) and worsening tensions
between the American and Russian-backed areas of Korea.
Harnessing the uncanny, his staged still life with a giant
hand emerging morbidly from the soil, represents a poetic
commentary on the horrors of war.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

X79743

31
Jung Haechang
(Seoul, Korean Empire 1907 [present-day South Korea] –
Seoul, South Korea 1968)

Inhyong ui kkum I
A Doll’s Dream I

1929–1941
Gelatin silver print

This work belongs to a series that is among the few known

examples of Surrealist-inflected photography made in Korea
before the mid-20th century. Jung had returned to Seoul
in 1929 after studying in Tokyo, where he probably learned
of Surrealism. Although never claiming to be a Surrealist,
he included national emblems in his image, such as the
miniature versions of protective totems, which may speak of
the repressions in Korea during Japanese colonial rule.

The Museum of Photography, Seoul

X79826

32
Fernando Lemos
(Lisbon, Portugal 1926 – São Paulo, Brazil 2019)

Intimidade dos Armazéns do Chiado

Intimacy of the Chiado Warehouses

circa 1949-1952
Gelatin silver print

Lemos was a multifaceted artist, and poet who worked in

Surrealist circles in Lisbon. For him, Surrealism was a means
to single out the uncanny and reveal hidden aspects of
reality. Here, the strange assortment of objects including
fake limbs and a head, creates a feeling of uncertainty.
Surrealism also served as a challenge to the conservatism
of prime minister António Salazar’s regime in Portugal, until
Lemos left for Brazil in 1952.

CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

X79355

33
Plinth against wall

Pablo Picasso
(Malaga, Spain 1881 – Mougins, France 1973)

Composition au gant
Composition with Glove

1930
Cardboard, plaster, wood and sand

Though he did not identify as a Surrealist, Picasso associated

with Surrealist thinkers and artists through shared values
and social connections. His work overlapped with their
techniques and themes, and was illustrated in many
Surrealist journals as they also shared this affinity. This sand-
coated relief brings everyday, but apparently unrelated,
elements into poetic confrontation.

Musée national Picasso – Paris

X79703

34
Vitrine against wall

Catalogue for Exposition surréaliste d’objets (Surrealist

Exhibition of Objects), Galerie Charles Ratton, Paris, 22–29
May 1936

1936
Exhibition catalogue

Notice of the Soirée Surrealista (Surrealist Soirée) in Leit

motiv: Boletin de hechos et ideas (Leit motif: Bulletin of
Deeds and Ideas), no. 2–3, Santiago de Chile

December 1943
Journal

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends of

Thomas J. Watson Library Gift. (GS.418 / N6494.S8 E975 1936)
X82927

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift. (GS.533 /AP63 .L45 no. 2-3)
X82928

35
The 1936 Surrealist Exhibition of Objects in Paris presented
a range of unusual categories for Surrealist objects, such
as ‘interpreted’ and ‘incorporated’ objects (animal and
mineral specimens), ‘perturbed objects,’ ‘found objects,’
mathematical models, and ‘readymades’. Many of the
objects came from the artists’ personal collections. In
Santiago de Chile, the editors of Mandrágora (Mandrake)
and Leit motiv, Braulio Arenas and Jorge Cáceres, began
organising Surrealist exhibitions in 1941. Two years later they
included other Surrealist objects when presenting their work
along with that of Roberto Matta and Erich G. Schoof in a
Soirée Surrealista.

36
Ghérasim Luca
(Bucharest, Romania 1913 – Paris, France 1994)

Photocollage reproduced in
Le Vampire passif, Paris and Bucharest
The Passive Vampire

1945
Book

Luca’s book appeared at the end of the Second World War.

Through text and images, it presents what the artist called
‘obsessively offered objects,’ which he conceived for specific
individuals and constructed from the detritus of war-
torn Bucharest.

The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

X82912

37
Brassaï
(Brașov, Austria-Hungary [present-day Romania] 1899 – Côte
d’Azur, France 1984)
and Salvador Dalí
(Figueres, Spain 1904 – Figueres, Spain 1989)

‘Scultures involontaires’ (‘Involuntary sculptures’), Minotaure,

no.3-4, 1933

1933
Journal

These objects shaped by unconscious actions were collected

by Dalí and photographed by Brassaï. Through close-ups,
their strangeness is highlighted.

Tate Library
Z76186

38
Jan Švankmajer, director
(born Prague, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1934)

Byt
The Flat

1968
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film,
black-and-white, sound
Running time: 13min, 6sec

© Athanor Ltd
X83785

For many years Surrealism had to exist in secrecy under

the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Švankmajer’s
dark, hallucinatory films of the 1960s conjure up the
unpredictability and absurdity of everyday life under
totalitarianism. Byt (The Flat) was made in the year of the
Prague Spring, a brief period of liberalisation and mass
protest. The film follows a man whose apartment revolts
against him, reflecting the anxieties of the moment. The
Prague Spring was followed by the invasion of Soviet
forces and the reintroduction of hard-line communism.
Surrealism would not resurface publicly again until the Velvet
Revolution of 1989, which led to the end of communist rule
in Czechoslovakia.

39
Dušan Marek, director
(Bitouchov, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1926 –
Adelaide, Australia 1993)

Nightmare (The Magician)

1956
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 16mm film,
colour, silent. Running time: 7min, 4sec

Marek escaped Stalinist Czechoslovakia for Australia in

1948, bringing with him a form of Surrealism rooted in
Czech folklore. Soon after arriving, he held a Surrealist
exhibition in Adelaide. The films that he made in Australia
and in Papua New Guinea (where he lived from 1954–59)
reflect Marek’s transnational journey, combining Eastern
European traditions of puppetry with references to his new
surroundings, as well as a Surrealist challenge to reason.

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

X83767

40
Wall text

POE TIC OBJEC TS

Making Surrealist objects can be a powerful way to subvert

the everyday. As well as challenging the traditional look
of sculpture, the works shown here reinvest everyday
objects with what Parisian poet André Breton, author of the
1924 Manifeste du surréalisme (Manifesto of Surrealism),
called a ‘derangement of the senses.’ Often made with
unconventional, found or discarded materials such as bones,
shells or leather scraps, these assemblages produced by
artists connected to Surrealism, draw their impact from the
imaginative spark lit by the joining of otherwise unrelated
elements. For some, this was typified by a phrase from the
19th-century Montevideo poet Isidore Ducasse (the self-
styled Comte de Lautréamont), ‘as beautiful as the chance
encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an
operating table’.

Wolfgang Paalen described Surrealist objects as ‘time-

bombs of the conscience,’ while Salvador Dalí called them
‘absolutely useless from a practical and rational point of
view and created wholly for the purpose of materialising
in a fetishistic way, with maximum tangible reality, ideas
and fantasies of a delirious character.’ In their materials
and manufacture, objects such as those shown here by

41
Eileen Agar and Joyce Mansour could produce unexpected
responses. At their most powerful, poetic objects escape any
single interpretation.

42
Vitrine against wall

Jindřich Heisler
(Chrast, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1914 – Paris,
France 1953)
Toyen
(Prague, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1902 – Paris,
France 1980)

Z Kasemat spánku relaisované básne

From the Strongholds of Sleep: Materialised Poems, Prague,
1940

1940–1941
Bound volume with gelatin silver prints

Jindřich Heisler
(Chrast, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1914– Paris,
France 1953)
Jindřich Štyrský
(Prague, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1899 –
Prague, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1942)

Na jehlách těchto dní

On the Needles of These Days, Prague, 1941, 2nd ed. 1945
1945

43
Bound volume with heliogravure prints

Collection of Richard S. Frary; courtesy of Ubu Gallery,

New York
X81426

Tate Library
Z76116

Lee Miller
(Poughkeepsie, US 1907 – Chiddingly, UK 1977)

Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain under Fire

1941
Book

A wartime propaganda publication, Grim Glory was aimed

at gathering US support for Britain during the Blitz. Miller
took photographs in London, documenting the chaos of
destruction with bitter humour.

Private Collection
X82954

44
Shimozato Yoshio
(Nagoya, Japan 1907 – Nagoya, Japan 1981)

Mesemu zoku, Chōgenjitsushugi shashin-shū / Mesemb, 20

photographies surréalistes
Mesemb Genus: 20 Surrealist Photographs

1940
Spiral-bound book of photomechanical prints

This photobook is an important product of the Nagoya Foto

Abangarudo (Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde). It was established
in 1939 by the painter Shimozato, as an offshoot of a broader
Surrealist art club. He edited and contributed to the volume
alongside Inagaki Taizō, Sakata Minoru, and Tajima Tsugio.
Featuring cacti throughout, it was produced in consultation
with specialist cactus collectors. The anthropomorphic
sexuality reveals that eroticism was an aspect of the club’s
Surrealist thinking.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mary Ann

and Frank B. Arisman, in celebration of the Museum’s 50th
Anniversary, 2020 (JFMPL.Arisman.2020.37)
X82849

45
Kaveh Golestan
(Tehran, Iran 1950 – Kifri, Iraq 2003)

Untitled works from the series Az Div o Dad (Of Demon and
Beast)
1976
Diffusion transfer prints
© Kaveh Golestan Estate, Courtesy Archaeology of the
Final Decade
X79472, X79473, X79474, X79475

An important Iranian documentary photographer, Golestan

undertook a unique experiment with the series Az Div o Dad
(Of Demon and Beast). Here, he merges human figures with
animal heads, creating a series of surreal and foreboding
creatures. The work references late Qajar monarchs (ca.
1844–1925) as a means to comment on the political authority
of the ruling Shah. He produced these composite images
of heraldic beasts and photographs of Qajar leaders by
moving elements in front of the shutter over long exposures.
Merging the rational and illogical, the real and the fantastic,
Golestan’s figures implicitly critique the political climate
of pre-revolutionary Iran. While he did not identify with
Surrealism, he was aware of the movement’s ideas and
borrowed Surrealist vocabulary and technique to produce
the series.

46
Vitrine – middle of room, L shaped

Salvador Dalí
(Figueres, Spain 1904 – Figueres, Spain 1989)

Téléphone-Homard
Lobster Telephone

1938
Steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper

Uniting a working Bakelite telephone with a plaster lobster,

Dalí made a modern communication device dysfunctional
and dangerous, yet playful. The lobster’s tail, where its
sexual organs are located, is placed directly over the
phone’s mouthpiece.

Tate. Purchased 1981

T03257

47
Joyce Mansour
(Bowden, UK 1928 – Paris, France 1986)

Untitled (Objet méchant)

Untitled (Nasty Object)

1965–69
Assorted scraps of metal

Mansour published her first book of poems in Cairo in

1953. She was 25. Her work caught the attention of the Paris
Surrealists and she became central to the group after settling
there in 1956. Inspired by Surrealism’s unbounded approach
to self-expression, that could lead to many different outputs,
she produced artworks like this objet méchant, a sponge ball
into which she pushed nails and bits of metal.

Private Collection
X80962

48
Dorothea Tanning
(Galesburg, Illinois, US 1910 – New York, US 2012)

Pincushion to Serve as Fetish

1965
Velvet, plastic funnel, metal pins, sawdust and wool

Pincushion to Serve as Fetish was described by Tanning as

‘not an image, but bristling with images’. It resembles a small
animal, but the white lines on the black velvet, together with
the pins pushed into it, also hint at the operations of magic
or ritual. Tanning wrote: ’A fetish is something not exactly
or always desirable in sculpture, being a superstitious if not
actually shamanistic object; and yet, to my mind it’s not so far
from a pincushion – after all, pins are routinely stuck in both.’

Tate. Purchased 2003

T07988

49
Eileen Agar
(Buenos Aires, Argentina 1899 – London, UK 1991)

Angel of Anarchy

1936–40
Plaster, fabric, shells, beads, diamante stones and
other materials

Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1983

T03809

Agar made this assemblage from found materials including

mussels shells, African beads and ostrich feathers. Some
of the elements could suggest facial features, decorative
accessories or a blindfold. This ambiguity creates allusions
to sexual desire and power, while the random combination
of objects could refer to the anarchy referenced in the title.
From 1932 Agar was a contributor to The Island, a journal
sympathetic to Surrealism. She associated directly with
the movement after exhibiting in the 1936 International
Exhibition of Surrealism in London and Fantastic Art, Dada,
Surrealism organised that same year by the Museum of
Modern Art in New York.

50
Artur Cruzeiro Seixas
(Amadora, Portugal 1920 – Lisbon, Portugal 2020)

O seu olhar já não se dirige para a terra, mas tem os pés

assentes nela
No Longer Looking at the Earth, but Keeping Feet Firmly on
the Ground

1953
African forest buffalo’s hoof, paper collage, gouache, wood
and turtle bone

Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, VN Famalicão

X79480

Escaping António Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal, Seixas

moved to Luanda where he held the first explicitly Surrealist
exhibition in Angola. This object, which may have been
included in the show, combines a buffalo hoof with an antler-
like shape adorned with an eye. Its title is taken from a poem
by Antonin Artaud and suggests a rootedness in the physical
world, although its form gestures to something surreal
and uncanny.

51
Marcel Duchamp
(Blainville, France 1887 – Neuilly-sur-Seine,
France 1968)

Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?

1921, replica 1964

Wood, metal, marble, cuttlefish bone, thermometer
and glass

Tate. Purchased 1999

T07508

Duchamp, who participated in Surrealism as a curator and

organiser, also showed work in Surrealist exhibitions. A
version of this artwork was displayed at the 1936 Exposition
surréaliste d’objets (Surrealist Exhibition of Objects) at
the Galerie Ratton in Paris. Duchamp identified this as an
‘assisted readymade’, as it combines found elements (such as
the cage) with his subtle interventions; in this case playing on
the visual similarity between sugar cubes and marble blocks.

52
Roland Penrose
(London, UK 1900 – Chiddingly, East Sussex, UK 1984)

The Last Voyage of Captain Cook

1936–67
Plaster and steel on wooden base

Presented by Mrs Gabrielle Keiller through the Friends of the

Tate Gallery 1982
T03377

The joining of seemingly unconnected items, such as

this globe and torso, is typical of the objects made by
Surrealists in the 1930s. The title, referring to the 18th
century coloniser, suggests a connection between erotic
desires and geographic colonisation. The globe could also
represent a cage with the torso trapped inside. The work
was included in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition
in London, initiated by Roland Penrose and the poet David
Gascoyne. The artist later remarked that it was meant ‘to
provoke a hallucinatory metamorphosis.’

53
Joseph Cornell
(Nyack, New York, US 1903 – Flushing, New York, US 1972)

Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace)

1950
Glass, crystal, wood and paper

Tate. Purchased 1974

T01846

This work is dedicated to Giuditta Pasta, a 19th-century

Italian opera singer. The astronomical theme may relate to
an account, which Cornell kept among his cuttings, in which
Pasta’s voice is described as evoking the beauty of the night
sky. Cornell idolised a number of almost-forgotten theatrical
stars who for him, epitomised the ideals of the Romantic
era, a 19th-century movement in art and literature that
focused on human psychology, expression of personal
feeling and interest in the natural world.

54
ROOM 3

55
Clockwise from room entrance

Richard Oelze
(Magdeburg, Germany 1900 – Gut Postehlz, Germany 1980)

Tägliche Drangsale
Everyday Tribulations

1934
Oil paint on canvas

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (1439)

X77690

Oelze painted this canvas a year after the National Socialists

assumed power in Germany. Its title and ambiguous forms
suggest the difficulties and fears of the moment. Surrealism
was known in Germany, but in the 1920s and 1930s it
competed with the opposing national movement of Neue
Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Where Neue Sachlichkeit
emphasised a view of the world in cold, unflinching reality,
Surrealism pushed beyond to the unconscious. Oelze
associated with Surrealism, but only after he relocated
to Switzerland in 1929. Nightmares and premonitions are
recurring themes in his work.

56
Juan Batlle Planas
(Torroella de Montgrí, Spain 1911 –
Buenos Aires, Argentina 1966)

El mensaje
The Message

1941
Tempera on canvas

Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Latin

American Acquisitions Committee 2021. On long term loan
X82426

The composition and title of this painting suggests that

a message is being passed between the figures. Like a
number of Argentinian artists, Batlle Planas embraced
Surrealism with enthusiasm, in part as a protest against
the populist conservativism of political leader Juan Perón.
Batlle Planas exhibited regularly in Argentina, and his
small-format paintings of the 1940s reveal a personal
dream-imagery and an engagement with the work of artist
Giorgio de Chirico. Shortly after his death, this work was
included in the 1967 Buenos Aires exhibition Surrealismo
en la Argentina (Surrealism in Argentina), organised by
poet Aldo Pellegrini, a major recognition of the relevance of
Surrealism in the country.

57
Wall text

THE WORK OF DRE AMS

Surrealism has questioned – and sometimes attempted to

overthrow – the strongholds of consciousness and control.
Dreams are critical to this end because, like hallucinations
and delusions, many have believed that they can reveal
the workings of the unconscious mind. In some works
on show here, fantastical juxtapositions or nightmarish
subjects capture the sense of the ordinary made unfamiliar.
Surrealist artists in various locations have seized this
potential for liberation. They seek the inspiration of dreams
to break from limitations imposed by societal customs, or to
bring the self, community, or work of art beyond the reach
of waking reality.

Sigmund Freud’s widely translated book, The Interpretation

of Dreams (1900) provided an early, vital stimulus for many
artists’ approaches to Surrealism. Through case studies of
his patients, Freud believed that dreams exposed emotions
otherwise repressed by social convention. Max Ernst’s
painting, for example, draws upon such an experience: a
‘fever vision’ in which he saw forms appear in the graining
of wood panelling.

58
Max Ernst
(Brühl, Germany 1891 – Paris, France 1976)

Deux Enfants sont menacés par un rossignol

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

1924
Oil paint with painted wood elements and cut-and-pasted
printed paper on wood with wood frame

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1937

X77715

With a combination of painted and sculpted elements, and

a poetic title, Ernst achieved a dreamlike atmosphere. By
tapping into unconscious imagery, it suggests a strange and
anxious narrative. Aligning closely with Surrealist practice, it
was soon recognised as a pivotal work. It was reproduced in
the Paris group’s journal, La Révolution surréaliste, in July
1925, and included in the exhibition La Peinture surréaliste
in November that same year. A decade later, in May 1935,
it was reproduced in the Chinese journal Yifeng (Art Wind)
in Shanghai.

59
Rita Kernn-Larsen
(Hillerød, Denmark 1904 – Copenhagen, Denmark 1998)

Fantomerne
Phantoms

1934
Oil paint on cardboard

Kernn-Larsen’s exploration of unexpected imagery

extended, at times, to a contrast of stylistic modes within a
single composition. Phantoms was triggered by the shock
of witnessing a drowning at sea, and the image evokes
the haunting figures of the victims. The painting dates
from Kernn-Larsen’s involvement with Surrealism both
in Copenhagen and in London, where she showed in the
International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936.

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (KMS7461)

X79772

60
Tarsila do Amaral
(Capivari, Brazil 1886 – São Paulo, Brazil 1973)

Cidade (a Rua)
City (The Street)

1929
Oil paint on canvas

Tarsila (as she is known) explained that this painting

recorded ‘a dream that demanded expression.’ In Paris,
she was part of a thriving circle, including Surrealist poet
Benjamin Péret. On returning to São Paulo, Tarsila and her
partner, poet Oswald de Andrade, devised a specifically
Brazilian modern art that they termed antropofagia
(cannibalism). They sought to overturn ideas of European
domination in culture. Andrade wrote: ‘After Surrealism,
only Antropofagia.’

Bolsa de Arte do Rio de Janeiro Collection, Rio de Janeiro

X79780

61
Yves Tanguy
(Paris, France 1900 – Woodbury, Connecticut, US 1955)

Mille Fois
A Thousand Times

1933
Oil paint on canvas

Tanguy’s forms have no direct basis in reality, but the

horizontal bands of colour create a dreamlike depth without
defining distance. Due to the precision of his technique,
Tanguy worked slowly and only completed about ten
paintings in the year he made Mille Fois (A Thousand
Times). Its threatening atmosphere may reflect the bleak
economic and political climate of Europe in the 1930s.

Bequeathed by Eugene and Penelope Rosenberg 2015

T14302

62
Erna Rosenstein
(Lemburg, Austria-Hungary [present-day Lviv, Ukraine] 1913
– Warsaw, Poland 2004)

Ekrany
Screens

1951
Oil paint on canvas

Rosenstein travelled from Kraków to Paris in 1938 and

saw the Exposition internationale du surréalisme. It had
a major impact on her work, although she later rejected
affiliation with the movement. A survivor of the Holocaust,
she processed her traumatic experience through the lens of
Surrealism as a cathartic release. Ekrany (Screens) features
the disembodied heads of her murdered parents. ‘The
screen for projecting thought,’ she once said, ‘has been
there for a long time it is painting.’

Muzeum Sztuki, Łodzi

X79737

63
Hernando R. Ocampo
(Manila, Philippines 1911 – Caloocan, Philippines 1978)

Glooming

1939
Oil paint on canvas board

In this painting Ocampo sets body parts in the shadow cast

by a giant crucifix across a dreamlike landscape. Ocampo
was a member of the Thirteen Moderns formed in Manila
in the 1930s. He merged his interest in Surrealism with
Catholic imagery. While rejected by Paris Surrealists, such
religious imagery served as a tool for political resistance in
the Philippines. It was also a way to explore the anxieties
caused by the colonial influence of the US.

Paulino and Hetty Que

X80196

64
Antonio Berni
(Rosario, Argentina 1905 – Buenos Aires, Argentina 1981)

Landru en el hotel, Paris

Landru in the Hotel, Paris

1932
Oil paint on canvas

Landru en el hotel, Paris combines fear and lurid

fascination – in the face of a French serial killer – to create
what Berni termed a ‘nightmare.’ In 1932, Berni showed this
work in an exhibition in Buenos Aires, after returning from
Paris. Critics condemned his paintings as offensive – their
response, however, confirmed Berni’s interest in Surrealism
as a tool for challenging bourgeois and conventional values.

Private Collection, Courtesy Galeria Sur

X79862

65
Mayo (Antoine Malliarakis)
(Port Said, Egypt 1906 – Seine-Port, France 1990)

Coups de bâtons
Baton Blows

1937
Oil paint on canvas

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (0630)

X79394

A close look at this jumble of pastel-coloured forms reveals

social tumult, political extremism, and violence. Mayo had
already made connections with the Paris Surrealists in the
1920s. This work dates from his period in Cairo where he
exhibited with the group al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et
Liberté (Art and Liberty). As the title suggests, this work
records one of the frequent confrontations of the period
between police and people (including students and labour
unions) protesting the treatment of people experiencing
poverty and the lingering influence of colonial Britain,
despite Egypt’s official independence.

66
Malangatana Ngwenya
(Matalana, Mozambique 1936 – Matosinhos, Portugal 2011)

Untitled

1967
Oil paint on hardboard

Purchased with funds provided by the Africa Acquisitions

Committee 2014
T13985

Malangatana (as he is known) drew his themes and visual

language from experiences in Mozambique during the
movement for independence from Portugal. Here, figures
representing people in the fight for independence overlap,
seemingly merging into one another. In 1964 he joined
the Liberation Front of Mozambique, or FRELIMO, and
was detained for his activities in the country’s war of
independence (1964–74). Although initially unaware of
Surrealism, he noted that ‘I found myself in some of it’.
He became part of a network of artists who drew upon
Surrealism in the anticolonial struggle across Africa, and he
would later participate in international Surrealist exhibitions
in Chicago (1976) and Lisbon (1984).

67
Joan Miró
(Barcelona, Spain 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, Spain 1983)

Mai 68
May 68

1968–73
Acrylic paint and oil paint on canvas

Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

X79873

Miró made this painting during the final years of General

Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. Its title and date demonstrate
the artist’s support for the student uprisings of 1968,
during which protesters spray-painted Surrealist slogans
on the walls of the Sorbonne in Paris. Within this energetic
composition that mimics graffiti, the artist added his
handprints, connecting himself to their cause. Involved in
Surrealism since the early 1920s, Miró later recalled the
‘sense of drama and expectation in equal measure [in] that
unforgettable rebellion of youth.’

68
Yamashita Kikuji
(Tokushima, Japan 1919 – Kanagawa, Japan 1986)

Matsurawareru senshi
Deification of a Soldier

1967
Oil paint on canvas

Purchased with funds provided by the Asia-Pacific

Acquisitions Committee 2018
T15021

Yamashita’s experience while conscripted in the Imperial

Japanese Army in China during the Second World War left
him with a feeling of deep remorse. In the 1950s, with
others including Ikeda Tatsuo, Yamashita was a key artist
within Ruporutaju kaiga (Reportage painting) – realistic
paintings with a clear political message that addressed the
aftermath of war. By the time that he made Matsurawareru
senshi (Deification of a Soldier) the reality and presence
of conflict was evident again, due to the Vietnam
War (1955–75).

69
Byon Yeongwon
(Gyeongseong, Korea [present-day Seoul, South Korea]
1921 – Seoul, South Korea 1988)

Pangongyohan
Anti-Communist Female Souls

1952
Oil paint on canvas

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary

Art, Korea
X79744

In this work, animalistic creatures seemed to be

advancing towards an unknown threat. Byon was a
celebrated artist and critic who wrote about Surrealism
in essays published in the 1950s. His work at that time
broke from both Western aesthetics and the cultural
influence of Japan, the colonial occupier of Korea until
1945. In works such as this, he harnessed Surrealism’s
political potential. He also drew on the formal language
of Cubism’s fragmentation of reality to capture
the violence of the war between North and South
Korea, 1950–53.

70
Vitrine against wall

Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, no.1

Autumn 1970

Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, no. 2

Summer 1973

Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, no.3

Spring 1976

Journals

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006.

TGA 200610
Z76153, Z76157, Z76159

71
Marvelous Freedom, Vigilance of Desire, with cover
illustration by Eugenio Granell
(A Corunña, Spain 1912 – Madrid, Spain 2001)

1976
Exhibition catalogue

Over the course of the 1970s the activities of the

Chicago Surrealist Group expanded widely. The large-
scale World Surrealist Exhibition Marvelous Freedom,
Vigilance of Desire that Franklin Rosemont organised
in 1976 showcased more than 100 active surrealists at
the time. Co-organised with Edouard Jaguer and Abdul
Kader El Janabi in Paris, Takiguchi Shūzō in Tokyo, and
Mario Cesariny in Lisbon, it attested to the international
surrealist networks. As well as the organisers, it included
works by artists such as Ted Joans, Mimi Parent, Eugenio
Granell, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, and Tatsuo Ikeda.

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006

TGA 200610
Z76158

72
Radical America: An SDS Journal of Radicalism vol.4,
no. 1, special issue on ‘Surrealism in the Service
of Revolution,’ with cover illustration by Toyen,
January 1970

January 1970

Radical America: An SDS Journal of Radicalism vol.4,

no. 6, with cover illustration by Franklin Rosemont, 6
August 1970

6 August 1970

Journals

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006

TGA 200610.
Z76155, Z76154

Rosemont edited three issues of Radical America,

Paul Buhle’s project for the Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) based in Chicago. The issues brought to
a US audience the revolutionary aims and principles
of Surrealism, voicing the way in which Surrealist art
coalesced with the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist
views of the Chicago group. Rosemont wrote in his first

73
issue: ‘surrealism fully recognises that the liberation of
the mind requires thoroughgoing social liberation ... and
consequently situates itself unhesitatingly ‘in the service
of the Revolution’’.

Surrealist Insurrection no.3

26 August 1968

Surrealist Insurrection no.4

February 1970

Surrealist Insurrection no.5

October 1972

Posters

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006.

TGA 200610
X82930, X82955, Z76049

74
Wall text

CONVERGENCE POINT: CHIC AGO

In the US during the 1960s, Chicago became a hub

of Surrealism as a form of radical protest. This was a
moment of youth culture and political organisation,
marked by mass protests in support of urgent causes,
including the civil rights and workers’ movements,
and campaigns against the Vietnam War. In August
1968, during demonstrations aimed at influencing the
Democratic National Convention, national television
captured the violent dispersal of protesters by Chicago
police and National Guardsmen. The members of the
Chicago Surrealist Group were under the leadership
of Franklin and Penelope Rosemont at the time, who
were both out protesting. The group narrowly avoided
injury and arrest, working behind the scenes, printing
materials and supporting security efforts for activists.

The Chicago group’s prolific production of texts

has become a hallmark of their politically radical
Surrealism. They embraced the mimeograph (a low-cost
copier machine) and offset-printing revolution of the
underground press, resiliently staying in dialogue with
current social movements, while drawing inspiration

75
from historical examples of radicalism in art and politics,
especially in earlier Surrealist groups. Working across
generations, they insisted on the intersection of the
politics of race, class, and gender in Surrealism.

Image caption

Chicago Surrealists, 1976. Back row, from left: Finn Lauge

Thompsen, Deborah Taub, Robert Green, Ron Papp,
Thom Burns, Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont,
Paul Garon; front row, from left: Valerie Cicero, Timothy
R. Johnson, Jean-Jacques Dauben, Janine Rothwell,
Brooke Rothwell. Photograph by Alexas Urba. University
of Michigan Library, Joseph A. Labadie Collections,
Special Collections Research Center, Ann Arbor

76
Wall text

RE VOLUTION, FIRST AND ALWAYS

Revolution is a central idea for Surrealism, as it offers

the possibility for transformation and liberation. Since
its conception, Surrealism has challenged predominant
systems of power and privilege, division and exclusion,
and has been emboldened by a growing chorus of
voices. Alongside the cultural and sociopolitical forces
that determined its own evolving history over the last
century, Surrealism has presented a model for political
engagement and agitation for artists, many of whom
have been arrested for ‘subversive’ behaviour.

While Surrealists have expressed revolutionary ideas

in poetic and artistic terms, some, including those
assembled here, have also generated collective
actions. They have condemned imperialism, racism,
authoritarianism, fascism, capitalism, greed, militarism,
and other forms of power and control. From student,
civil rights and anti-war protests, to the decolonisation
movement, Surrealism has served as a tool, but not
a formula. As Léopold Senghor, Surrealist poet, first
president of Senegal and cofounder of the Black
consciousness movement Négritude explained in 1960:

77
‘We accepted Surrealism as a means, but not as an end,
as an ally, and not as a master’.

78
Ikeda Tatsuo
(Imari, Saga Prefecture, Japan 1928 – Tokyo, Japan 2020)

Kinjuu-ki bangai: Masuku dori

Birds and Beasts Chronicle, an Extra Edition:
Mask Bird

1958
Pen, conté and watercolor on paper

Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York and Tokyo

X79876

Ikeda turned to art as a way to bear witness to Japan’s

military defeat during the Second World War, the Allied
Occupation of Japan (1945–52), and nuclear atrocities.
Following his art education in Tokyo, he joined a loose
collective of artists led by Taro Okamoto. They rejected
both abstraction and social realism (art depicting
working-class experience) as inadequate modes for
representing the realities of the post-war period. While
not an avowed Surrealist, Ikeda drew upon the Surrealist
ideas in order to convey his concerns through fantastical
figures and animist references.

79
Vitrine – middle of room

Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant

For a Revolutionary Independent Art

25 July 1938
Pamphlets

Written with Leon Trotsky in Mexico, but only signed by

André Breton and Diego Rivera, this manifesto conceives
of a revolution that establishes a socialist centralised
system to produce material goods, but an anarchist
regime of individual freedom for intellectual creation. It
emphasises the importance of art to be independent
from State control, but always bolstering social change:
‘True art [...] must be revolutionary, in other words aspire
to a complete and radical reconstruction of society.’

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item.

Purchased, 2016 TGA 20161/4
Z76164

80
Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art
Translated extract in English

The aim of the present appeal is to find a meeting

ground for the revolutionary defenders of art, to
serve the revolution by the methods of art, and to
defend the freedom of art itself against the usurpers
of the revolution. We are deeply convinced that this
platform can bring together the representatives
of tolerably divergent aesthetic, philosophical and
political tendencies. Marxists can march here hand in
hand with anarchists on condition that both set their
faces resolutely against the reactionary police spirit
whether represented by Joseph Stalin or by his vassal
Garcia Oliver.

Published in London Bulletin, No.7, December

1938-January 1939
Z76164

81
Contre-Attaque: Union de lutte des intellectuels
revolutionnaires
Counter-Attack: Union of Revolutionary Intellectuals

1935
Pamphlet

After leaving the French Communist Party in 1933,

André Breton created the group Contre-Attaque
with Georges Bataille. This Union of Revolutionary
Intellectuals expressed its ultra-left radical political
ideas in pamphlets such as this one. It demanded a
strong revolution and the death of anyone benefitting
from capitalism or the oppression of the working classes.
This coalition was short-lived but was joined by many
Surrealists and members of the Democratic Communist
Circle, who signed the document.

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item. Purchased, 2016 TGA

20161/4, Z76162

82
Louis Aragon
(Paris, France 1897 – Paris, France 1982)
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)

Premier bilan de l’exposition coloniale

First Inventory of the Colonial Exposition

1931
Pamphlet

Louis Aragon
(Paris, France 1897 – Paris, France 1982)
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)

Ne visitez pas l’exposition coloniale

Do Not Visit the Colonial Exposition

1931
Leaflet

Tate Library. Z76048

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item. Purchased, 2016 TGA
20161/4. Z76053

83
‘A l’Exposition: La Vérité sur les colonies’ (At the
Exhibition: The Truth about the Colonies) in Le
Surréalisme au service de la révolution (Surrealism in
the Service of the Revolution), no. 4, December 1931

1931
Journal

Collection of Timothy Baum, New York. X82526

In 1931, the French government presented the

Exposition coloniale internationale (International
Colonial Exposition) to display Indigenous people,
possessions and objects. It was conceived as a
presentation of French colonial wealth and power.
In response, the Surrealists in the city attended
demonstrations, issued pamphlets, and co-organised
a counter-exhibition. These three publications demand
the immediate evacuation of the colonies and denounce
capitalist imperialism and the seizure of objects
from colonial territories. Organised together with the
Communist Party and the Anti-Imperial League, the
Surrealists’ counter-exhibition, La vérité sur les colonies
(The Truth about the Colonies) was recorded in their
periodical, presenting objects from their personal
collections combined with Marxist slogans.

84
Freedom is a Vietnamese Word
Translated extract in English

There is indeed war in Indochina – imperialist war,

fought in the name of a people who have themselves
been liberated after five years of oppression, against
another people who are of a single voice in their wish
for freedom.

The aggression has grave consequences.

[…] Surrealism, whose great objective as always is the
liberation of mankind, can hardly remain silent at such a
senseless and revolting criminality. Surrealism can only
be against a regime which as a unit view this bloody
spectacle with pleasure; a regime which, almost as soon
as it was born, collapses into the mire of compromise
and execution, and which is but a calculated prelude to
the construction of the next totalitarianism.

From Franklin Rosemont (ed.), André Breton. What Is

Surrealism?: Selected Writings, 1978
Z76163

85
ROOM 4

86
Clockwise from room entrance

Giorgio de Chirico
(Volos, Greece 1888 – Rome, Italy 1978)

Le rêve de Tobie
The Dream of Tobias

1917
Oil paint on canvas

The giant thermometer and a cryptic text, ‘AIDEL’,

suggest private meanings held in de Chirico’s mysterious
canvas. Surrealist poet Paul Eluard owned this painting
and placed it in the Bureau where it was installed along
with a plaster figure of a woman and a copy of Fantômas,
a popular crime novel, fixed to the wall by forks. While
de Chirico did not join the Paris group officially, those
in the Bureau welcomed him, as they long found a
connection with his enigmatic dream imagery.

The Bluff Collection

X79775

87
Pablo Picasso
(Malaga, Spain 1881 – Mougins, France 1973)

Les Trois Danseuses

The Three Dancers

1925
Oil paint on canvas

Purchased with a special Grant-in-Aid and the Florence

Fox Bequest with assistance from the Friends of the Tate
Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society 1965.
T00729

The Surrealists greatly admired The Three Dancers.

To make the work, Picasso started with a realistic
representation of ballet dancers rehearsing. His
approach was transformed when he heard of the death
of Ramon Pichot, which brought back memories of
the suicide of their mutual friend, Carlos Casagemas.
Recognising the power of sex and violence infused in
the painting, André Breton persuade the artist to allow
it to be reproduced for the first time in his essay ‘Le
Surréalisme et la peinture’ (Surrealism and Painting) in
the July 1925 issue of La Révolution surréaliste.

88
Wall text

Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality

of certain forces of previously neglected associations, in
the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of
thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic
mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving
all the principal problems of life.

André Breton, 1924

89
Dédé Sunbeam
(dates unknown)

Untitled

1925
Ink and collage on paper

Sunbeam was a visitor to the Bureau and contributed

this collage-drawing to its journal La Révolution
surréaliste. It appears with a text by Michel Leiris, ‘Le
pays de mes rêves’ (The Land of My Dreams). Little is
documented about Sunbeam, but the declarations of
love inscribed in the drawing – ’the colour of love is a
triangle of white grass…’ and ‘it’s much more beautiful
than amber, isn’t it’ – are attuned to the Surrealist’s
commitment to the chance encounter and l’amour fou
(mad love).

Collection of Gale and Ira Drukier

X79466

90
Man Ray
(Philadelphia, US 1890 – Paris, France 1976)

L’Enigme d’Isidore Ducasse

The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse

1920, remade 1972

Sewing machine, wool and string

This object featured on the first page of the inaugural

issue of La Révolution surréaliste with the text
‘Surrealism opens the door of the dream to all those for
whom night is miserly.’ It embodies the phrase by poet
Isidore Ducasse (the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont)
that inspired many Surrealists: ‘as beautiful as the
chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella
on an operating table.’ Man Ray’s photographs served as
important early documents of the group’s activities.

Tate. Purchased 2003

T07957

91
Robert Desnos
(Paris, France 1900 – Theresienstadt concentration camp,
Czechoslovakia [present day Czechia] 1945)

‘Relation d’un rêve’ (Description of a Dream), excerpt

from La Clef des songes (The Key of Dreams), broadcast
on Radio Luxembourg

1937
Monaural digital audio, transferred from disc record.
Running time: 3min, 19sec

Though best known as a poet, Desnos also produced

Surrealist programs for French radio. He worked with
Alejo Carpentier and Paul Deharme as part of the
agency Foniric – the name a blend of the French words
phonique (phonic) and onirique (dreamlike). Desnos
hosted the broadcast played here, which dramatises a
dream narrative submitted by a listener.

Institut National de l’Audiovisuel

X83787

92
Grace Pailthorpe
(Sutton, UK 1883 – St Leonards-on-Sea, UK 1971)

Excerpt from ‘Surrealism and Psychology,’ broadcast on

Mirror for Women

1944
Monaural digital audio, transferred from disc record
Running time: 14min, 14sec

Through lectures, Surrealist and psychoanalyst

Pailthorpe shared news of Surrealism with western
Canada. One of these lectures was broadcast by
CBC Vancouver and is now played here. As a theorist
and painter, Pailthorpe, in partnership with Reuben
Mednikoff, had been a significant contributor to
Surrealism in London. Her approach, however, proved
controversial with colleagues as it was seen as placing
scientific limits on the irrational.

CBC Licencing
X83789

93
Wall text

R ADIO
Artists associated with Surrealism have used exhibitions
and journals to exchange ideas, extend networks across
national boundaries, and unite diasporic communities.
Film and radio have had an even greater potential to
reach new audiences, despite demanding financial
and technological resources not available to all.
Alongside reports and interviews, radio dramas and
atmospheric reportage have been vehicles for Surrealist
communication that, while best received by those
who share a language, aspire nevertheless to engage
listeners’ desires, fears and dreams.

94
Wall text

CONVERGENCE POINT: THE BURE AU DE

RECHERCHE S SURRÉ ALISTE S, PARIS

On 11 October 1924, the Paris Surrealists opened the

Bureau de recherches surréalistes (Bureau of Surrealist
Research). The poet Antonin Artaud, who functioned
as its director, called it an ‘agency of communication’.
Established as a gathering place, the Bureau aimed
to ‘reclassify life’. Members assembled an archive of
materials relating to the Surrealist revolution. They
collected dream narratives, documented trouvailles
(finds) and chance occurrences, and prepared projects
such as a ‘glossary of the marvellous’. It was decorated
to surprise visitors – with a plaster cast of a woman’s
body hanging from the ceiling and Giorgio de Chirico’s
Le Rêve de Tobie (The Dream of Tobias) on a wall.

The Bureau served a range of public functions. These

included receiving visitors, circulating collective
pamphlets and group publications, or papillons
(‘butterflies’), responding to press enquiries and issuing
the group’s first journal, La Révolution surréaliste. In
this way, it was a point of convergence as much as a
crossroads for circulation. Newcomers interested in

95
Surrealism visited to learn about, contribute to, and
even join the movement. Members fielded questions,
stimulated by their exchange of ideas and talent for
publicity. Subscribers from all points – whether Adelaide,
Bucharest, Prague or Rio de Janeiro – made contact and
shared their own news of Surrealist activities.

Image caption

At the Bureau, 1924. Standing, from left: Jacques Baron,

Raymond Queneau, André Breton, Jacques-André
Boiffard, Giorgio de Chirico, Roger Vitrac, Paul Eluard,
Philippe Soupault, Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon; seated:
Pierre Naville, Simone Breton, Max Morise, Mic Soupault.
Photograph by Man Ray. © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists
Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2021.
Photo © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY

96
Vitrine against wall

André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)

Le Surréalisme et la peinture
Surrealism and Painting

1928
Book

Louis Aragon
(Paris, France 1897 – Paris, France 1982)

La Peinture au défi
A Challenge to Painting

1930
Exhibition catalogue

Tate Library
Z76187

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item. Purchased, 2016 TGA

20161/4
Z76053

97
La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution),
no. 1, Paris, December 1924

1924
Journal

La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution),

no. 2, Paris, January 1925

1925
Journal

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman

Collection, Purchase, Joyce F. Menschel Library Fund,
2005. (JFMPL.30620009650275). X82921

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,

Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift.
(GS.414 / NX600 .S9 R48 no. 2). X82922

Man Ray’s photographs on the cover of the journal’s first

issue record events at the Bureau in November 1924. The
Paris Surrealists pose sombrely in the group photograph,
but the side images document more mysterious
activities. On the left, André Breton – the author of the
newly-published Manifeste du surréalisme (Manifesto

98
of Surrealism) – appears in a nocturnal meeting; on
the right, Simone Breton is poised to type the trance
utterances of the poet Robert Desnos, as others stand
by (the poet Paul Eluard and Giorgio de Chirico look into
the camera, past poet Louis Aragon). The second issue of
the journal included dream accounts, art, and texts, as
well as responses to an enquête (questionnaire). These
questionnaires featured in Surrealist journals that were
published and distributed internationally, allowing
artists and writers around the world to read and
respond to each other’s ideas.

99
Papillons (leaflets) circulated by
the Bureau de recherches surréalistes (Bureau of
Surrealist Research), Paris

1924–1925
Printed leaflets on multicoloured paper

The Surrealists in Paris often took inspiration from the

city around them. To initiate others into such chance
encounters, they posted leaflets printed with provocative
statements, hoping curious readers would then visit their
headquarters. They included the address at the bottom
of each sheet.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,

Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (GS.380
/ NX456.5.S8 V68 1924a, NX456.5.S8 R67 2018,
NX456.5.S8 B725 1948, NX456.5.S8 P43 1969 PS3606.
R42238 T66 2020, 107.5 G13 no.15)
X82920

100
ROOM 5

101
Clockwise from room entrance

Eva Sulzer
(Winterthur, Switzerland 1902 – Mexico City,
Mexico 1990)

Extract from Voyage Nord-Ouest

1939
Single-channel digital video transferred from 8mm film,
U-matic, and DV, black-and-white, silent
Running time: 24min, 23sec

Collection Christian Kloyber, Vienna (Austria)

X82730

In this home movie, Sulzer recorded the two-month

trip that she took in the summer of 1939 with Wolfgang
Paalen and Alice Rahon to the Pacific Northwest. They
moved along the coast of British Columbia and Alaska
documenting their activities on ten rolls of 8 mm film.
Sometimes passing the camera between them, the
friends captured their trips to Ketchikan, Sitka, Wrangell,
Haida Gwaii and Gilford Island, as well as their visits to
Indigenous sites and natural wonders.

102
Wall text

To possess a telescope without its other essential

half – the microscope – seems to me a symbol of the
darkest incomprehension. The task for the right eye is
to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into
the microscope.

Leonora Carrington, 1943

103
Vitrine against wall

Surrealist Insurrection no.3

26 August 1968

Surrealist Insurrection no.4

February 1970

Surrealist Insurrection no.5

October 1972

Posters

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006.

TGA 200610
X82930, X82955, Z76049

104
Wall text

E VA SUL ZER, TR AVELLER

For some Surrealist artists, travel brought the freedom

and pleasure of visiting new places and experiencing
different cultures. Surrealists have negotiated these sort of
encounters with varying degrees of privilege and sensitivity.
In 1939, artist Eva Sulzer left Paris to travel with the artist
couple Wolfgang Paalen and Alice Rahon. During a two-
month trip along the coast of northwest Canada and Alaska,
Sulzer recorded their experiences with her movie and
still cameras.

Though made over a short time that prevented sustained

engagement, her photographs appear distinct from
ethnographic exoticisation and are instead rooted in
documentary Surrealist photography. Through documenting
the displacement of Indigenous cultures, while also
photographing them in everyday encounters, her images
show some responsiveness to colonial structures, as well as
the resilience of Indigenous populations.

Sulzer spent the next 50 years in Mexico. Many of

her images would fuel the work of others in her circle:
illustrating artist-archaeologist Miguel Covarrubias’s book
on Indigenous art in North America (1945), spurring the

105
poetry of César Moro, and the work of a number of visual
artists. Most visibly, they shaped the publication of Paalen’s
dissident Surrealist journal, Dyn (1942–4).

Image caption

From left: Wolfgang Paalen, Eva Sulzer, and Alice Rahon,

and César Moro, Mexico, 1940. Succession Wolfgang Paalen
et Eva Sulzer. Image: Juan Larrea, El surrealismo entre viejo
y nuevo mundo (Ediciones Cuadernos Americanos, México,
1944), p 106.

106
Len Lye
(Christchurch, Aotearoa, New Zealand 1901 – Warwick, New
York, US 1980)

Tusalava

1929
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film,
black-and-white, silent

Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation. Digital version from

material preserved and made available by Ngā Taonga
Sound & Vision
X82847

An artist and filmmaker born in New Zealand, Lye

spent time in Samoa where he lived within the Samoan
community, admiring its art and supporting anti-colonial
politics. After a formative period in Sydney, he moved to
London in 1926, later showing with the London Surrealist
group. The animated hand-drawing in Tusalava reflects
Lye’s study and appreciation of Indigenous Oceanic art, as
well as his interest in Sigmund Freud’s theories. Inspired
in part by accounts of the witchetty grub totem of the
Arrernte people of Central Australia and themes of birth,
death, and rebirth, the work’s cross-cultural interests align
with Surrealism.

107
Vitrine against wall

Page spread from Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’

Domain, featuring ‘Standing Figure from the Marquesas
Islands’ and ‘Male Ancestor Figure from Easter Island’
D’Arcy Galleries, New York, November 28, 1960 –
January 28, 1961

1960
Exhibition catalogue

The 1960 exhibition Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’

Domain in New York merged international examples
of Surrealism with Pop art by Jasper Johns and Robert
Rauschenberg, alongside anonymous Indigenous art
from Oceania and the Pacific Northwest. In doing so, they
challenged post-war assumptions that Surrealism’s reach
was over. Their belief of an almost mythical convergence
of Indigenous and Surrealist objects, demonstrates an
extension of previous exhibition and collecting practices
from the 1930s and the era of decolonisation.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,

Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift.
(GS.450 / ND11265 .D353 1960)
X82917

108
‘Le monde au temps des surréalistes’ (The World in the
Time of the Surrealists), from Variétés (Varieties), special
Surrealist number, Brussels, June 1929

1929
Journal

This unsigned image disrupts conventional European

coordinates to position the Pacific Ocean and its major
islands at the heart of the world map. It featured in the
1929 Surrealist issue of the Brussels periodical Variétés
(Varieties). The image demonstrates Surrealism’s strategic
desire to disorient viewers by reframing dominant
regimes of knowledge. At the same time, the shrinking
of the colonising powers of Europe, Japan and the US
outlines an aspiration for cultural and political equality
and decolonisation. This world view itself travelled, as
it appeared two years later in the Mexican journal Los
Contemporáneos, as ‘El Mundo en tiempos del Surrealismo’
(The World in the Time of Surrealism).

Tate Library
Z76047

109
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)

Océanie
Galerie Andrée Olive, Paris
Oceania

1948
Exhibition catalogue

Breton, who formed a renowned Surrealist collection,

wrote of his unwavering attraction to Indigenous Oceanic
art in this catalogue. He stated that his acquisitions were
driven ‘by the hope of discovering, at the cost of constant
searching from morning to night, some rare Oceanic object...
I often need to come back to them, to watch them as I am
waking up, to take them into my hands, to talk to them, to
escort them back to their place of origin in my mind so as
to reconcile myself to where I am.’

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (GS.434 / P2 P19)
X82916

110
Wall text

THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF THE SURRE ALISTS

The drawing captioned Le Monde au temps des surréalistes

(The World in the Time of the Surrealists), published in 1929
(and enlarged for our exhibition entrance), reimagines the
world. Challenging geopolitical conventions that use maps
as a tool to define territories, the Surrealists’ growing anti-
imperialist sentiments are demonstrated by placing the
Pacific islands at the centre. They also give prominence to
(Soviet) Russia, and erase the colonising powers of Europe,
Japan, and the United States.

While embracing anti-colonial politics, Surrealists in

Europe mistakenly perceived an affinity with art made by
Indigenous peoples of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
This fantasy of shared ideas and perspectives is visible
in early Surrealist collections, journals, and exhibitions.
Objects made by Indigenous peoples were included in
the 1936 exhibition of ‘Surrealist objects’ in Paris. These
works, included for their perceived aesthetic value within
a European context, were stripped of place, maker and
their original meaning. This exposes how, even in valuing
the art of Indigenous peoples and deploring the systems
of colonialism, Surrealists remained entangled within a
colonial attitude of cultural appropriation.

111
ROOM 6

112
Clockwise from room entrance

Wall text

COLLEC TIVE IDENTITIE S

Surrealism depends upon a collective body of participants,

often working together in response to political or
social concerns. This unity acknowledges that working
collaboratively is often more powerful than as an individual
in isolation. Viewed across time and place, this quality has
been manifested in group exhibitions and demonstrations,
cowritten manifestos and declarations, and broadly shared
and circulated artistic, political and social values.

Collaborative pursuits could release what Simone Breton,

an early participant in Surrealism in Paris, called ‘images
unimaginable by one mind alone.’ Examples of such
generative activities include seánce-like explorations of
trances by Breton and her colleagues, questionnaires
published in the Belgrade Surrealist Circle’s journal, and the
Chicago Surrealists’ spoken-word poetry performed with
musicians. This collectivity has been expressed through art
making, especially evident in the multiple cadavre exquis
(exquisite corpse) drawings gathered in this room. These

113
are made by one participant drawing a form and, after
folding the paper, passing it on so that only the ends can
be seen by a second person who continues the work and
passes it on again. Group production fosters proximity and
intimacy, but it can also connect and make visible diasporic
and transnational communities.

Frida Kahlo
(Mexico City, Mexico 1907 – Mexico City, Mexico 1954)
Lucienne Bloch
(Geneva, Switzerland 1909 – Gualala, California, US 1999)

Exquisite Corpse (Frida)

Exquisite Corpse (Diego)

1932
Pencil on paper

Private collection
X80674, X80675

114
António Pedro
(Praia, Cape Verde 1909 – Praia de Moledo, Portugal 1966)
Fernando de Azevedo
(Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal 1923 – Lisbon, Portugal 2002)
Marcelino Vespeira
(Samouco, Portugal 1925 – Lisbon, Portugal 2002)
José-Augusto França
(Tomar, Portugal 1922 – Jarzé Villages, France 2021)

Cadavre exquis
Exquisite Corpse

1947
Pencil on paper

Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea do Chiado, Lisbon

(Inv. 2479)
X79723

115
Jean-Jacques Dauben
(born Frankfurt, Germany 1952)
Franklin Rosemont
(Chicago, US 1943 – Chicago, US 2009)
Eugenio F. Granell
(A Coruña, Spain 1912 – Madrid, Spain 2001)

Cadavre Exquis
Exquisite Corpse

1976
Ink on paper

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago

de Compostela
X79492

116
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)
Heriberto Cogollo
(born Cartagena, Colombia 1945)
AgustÍn Cárdenas
(Matanzas, Cuba 1927 – Havana, Cuba 2001)
Jorge Camacho
(Havana, Cuba 1934 – Paris, France 2011)
Wifredo Lam
(Sagua la Grande, Cuba 1902 – Paris, France 1982)
Roberto Matta
(Santiago, Chile 1911 – Civitavecchia, Italy 2002)
Hervé Télémaque
(born Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1937)
Joyce Mansour
(Bowdon, UK 1928 – Paris, France 1986)

The Seven Sons of Lautréamont (and his Dutiful

Beautiful Daughter)

1970–79
Ink on paper

Private Collection
X81424

117
Abdul Kader El Janabi
(born Baghdad, Iraq 1944)
with box by Anne Ethuin
(Coteau, France 1921 – Paris, France 2008)
Page spread by Tony Pusey (left) and El Janabi (right),
both undated

With additional contributions by Joxe Azurmendi (born

Zegama, Spain, 1941), Shimon Ballas (born Baghdad, Iraq
1930), Robert Benayoun (Kenitra, Morocco 1926 – Paris
1996), Jean Benoît (Quebec City 1922 – Paris 2010), Olga
Billoir (Buenos Aires 1930 – Spain 2002), Hilary Booth
(Greensborough, Victoria, 1956 – Canberra 2005), Jorge
Camacho (Havana 1934 – Paris 2011), Roger Cardinal
(Bromley, UK 1940 – Chartham Hatch, UK 2019), Mário
Cesariny (Lisbon 1923 – Lisbon 2006), Heriberto Cogollo
(born Cartagena, 1945), Jayne Cortez (Fort Huachuca,
Arizona, US 1934 – New York 2012), Michel Dintrich (1933
– Paris 2020), Tony Earnshaw (Ilkley, UK 1924 – Saltburn-by-
the-Sea, UK 2001), Melvin Edwards (born Houston, 1937),
Onsi El-Hajj (Kaitouly, Jezzine, Lebanon 1937 – Beirut 2014),
Nicole Espagnol (Paris 1937 – Paris 2006), Anne Ethuin
(Coteau, France 1921 – Paris 2008), Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Bronxville, New York, US 1919 – San Francisco 2021), Alain
Gauthier (born Paris, 1931), Giovanna (born Reggio Emilia,
Italy, 1934), Jimmy Gladiator (Paris 1948 – Poissy, France
2019), Jean-Michel Goutier (Montréal-la-Cluse, France

118
1935 – Paris 2020), Jon Graham (born El Paso, Texas 1954),
Ladislav Guderna (Nitra, Czechoslovakia [present-day
Slovakia] 1921 – Vancouver 1999), Martin Guderna (born
Bratislava, Czechoslovakia [present-day Slovakia], 1956),
Serge Guilbaut (born France, 1943), Chris Hammond, Paul
Hammond (Derby, UK 1948 – Barcelona 2020), Jim Haynes
(Haynesville, Louisiana, US 1933 – Paris 2021), Marianne Ivsic
(Budapest 1919 – Paris 1995), Edouard Jaguer (Paris 1924 –
Paris 2006), Ted Joans (Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver
2003), Pierre Joris (born Strasbourg, 1946), Alain Joubert
(Paris 1936 –2021), Alain Jouffroy (Paris 1928 – Paris 2015),
Saúl Kaminer (born Mexico City, 1952), Mustapha Khayati
(Tunisia 1938 – Paris 2011), Jorge Kleiman (Concepcion del
Uruguay, Argentina 1934 – Buenos Aires 2013), Robert
Lagarde (Beziers, France 1928 – Montpellier, France
1997), Jean-Pierre Le Goff (born Douarnenez, France 1942
– Montmorillon, France2012), Jean-Jacques Lebel (born
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 1936), Jacques Lecomblez (born
Brussels, 1934), Claude Lefort (Paris 1924 – Paris 2010),
Conroy Maddox (Ledbury, UK 1912–2005 London), Haytham
Manna (born Umm al-Mayadhin, Syria, 1951), Marcel Mariën
(Antwerp 1920 – Brussels 1993), Craig Marvell (Australia),
Roberto Matta (Santiago de Chile 1911 – Civitavecchia, Italy
2002), George Melly (Liverpool, U.K. 1926 – London 2007),
Jean-Paul Michel (born La Roche-Canillac, France 1948),
Yves Nadal (Brive, France 1949 – Turenne, France 1989),
Mimi Parent (Mont-Royal, Quebec, Canada 1924 – Villars-

119
sur-Olon, Switzerland 2005), Jules Perahim (Bucharest 1914
– Paris 2008), Pierre Peuchmaurd (Paris 1948 – Brive, France
2009), José Pierre (Bénesse-Maremne, France 1927 – Paris
1999), Tony Pusey (born London 1953), Michel Remy (born
Épinal, France 1946), Arturo Schwarz (Alexandria, Egypt,
1924 – Milan 2021), Georges Sebbag (born Marrakesh, 1942),
Monique Sebbag (born Carcassonne, France 1943), Gerald
Stack (born London 1953), Jean Terrossian (Paris, 1931 –
Paris 2021), Guy Tournille, Bo Veisland (born Nykøbing
Falster, Denmark 1951), Nanou Vialard (Saint-Hyppolite-
du-Fort, France 1929 – Montpellier, France 1993), John
W. Welson (born Llanfair-Llwythyfnwg, UK, 1953), Philip
West (York, UK 1949 – Zaragoza, Spain 1997), Peter Wood
(Heckmondwike, UK 1951 – Paris 1999), Michel Zimbacca
(Paris 1924 – Paris 2021), and others

Visa sans planéte

Visa Without a Planet

circa 1983–1990
Pencil, ink, and collage on Iraqi passport with artist box

El Janabi’s Visa sans planéte, made over seven years,

is a collaborative collage made by a number of fellow
Surrealists. The work registers his loss of official status
during the protracted process of becoming a French citizen.
This demonstrates that for many Surrealists, the personal

120
could not be separated from the political. Each page
contains a Surrealist ‘stamp’ issued by a fellow artist for a
kind of metaphorical passage, since without citizenship he
could not travel.

Abdul Kader El Janabi

X80950

121
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)
Max Morise
(Versailles, France 1900 – Paris, France 1973)
Jeannette Ducrocq Tanguy
(Cannes, France 1896 – Paris, France 1977)
Pierre Naville
(Paris, France 1904 – Paris, France 1993)
Benjamin Péret
(Rezé, France 1899 – Paris, France 1959)
Yves Tanguy
(Paris, France 1900 – Woodbury, Connecticut, US 1955)
Jacques Prévert
(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 1900 – Omonville-la-Petite, France
1977)

Cadavre exquis: Figure

Exquisite Corpse: Figure

1928
Composite collage of cut-and-pasted printed paper and
pencil on paper

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Van Gogh Purchase

Fund, 1937
X77716

122
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)
Nusch Eluard
(Mulhouse, France, 1906 – Paris, France 1946)
Valentine Hugo
(Boulogne-sur-Mer, France 1887 – Paris, France 1968)
Paul Eluard
(Saint-Denis, France 1895 – Charenton-le-Pont, France 1952)

Cadavre exquis
Exquisite Corpse

c.1930
Graphite on paper

Tate. Purchased 2005

T12005

123
Marko Ristić
(Belgrade, Serbia 1902 – Belgrade, Yugoslavia [present-day
Serbia] 1984)
Ševa Ristić
(Belgrade 1906 – Belgrade 1995)
André Thirion
(Baccarat, France 1907 – Levallois-Perret, France 2001)
Aleksandar Vučo
(Belgrade 1897 – Belgrade 1985)
Lula Vučo
(Požarevac, Serbia 1899 – Belgrade 1985)
Vane Bor
[Stevan Živadinović] (Bor, Serbia 1908 – Oxford 1993)

Le cadavre exquis no. 8

Exquisite Corpse no. 8

1930

Le cadavre exquis no. 11

Exquisite Corpse no. 11

1930

Coloured pencil and ink on paper

Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade,

124
Legacy of Marko Ristić, donated by Ševa and Mara Ristić.
X79729, X79730

These two works were made by members of the Belgrade

Surrealist Circle. Active from 1923, the group shared
interests with Surrealists in Paris, producing a diverse
body of work that called into question bourgeois values
and pressed for social revolution. The Belgrade Surrealists,
however, worked under the pressure and restrictions of the
royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia. The arrest, detention, and
exile of several key members in December 1932 ended their
collective actions.

125
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

Bird Lives!

1958
Oil paint on canvas mounted on hardboard

Joans arrived in Greenwich Village, the centre of the

burgeoning Beat movement, in 1951. He uniquely bridged
that spoken-word scene with his commitments to
Surrealism, Pan-Africanism, and jazz culture, fashioning
himself as a Surrealist jazz poet. Joans shared an
apartment with jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, nicknamed
‘Bird’. When Parker died in 1955, aged 35, Joans scrawled
the phrase ‘Bird Lives!’ around Lower Manhattan as an ad
hoc memorial; a few years later, he immortalized him in this
painting.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase,

Joyce I. Swader Bequest Fund and gift of J. Alec and Gail
Merriam (1997.86)
X79670

126
Vitrine against wall

Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

All of Ted Joans and No More

New York 1961

1961
Book

The Hipsters
New York 1961

1961
Book

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (
GS.467 / PS3560.O2 A88 1961). X82926

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (GS.466 / NC1429.J55 A5
1961). X82925

127
Joans’s Surrealist activity extended to his earliest
publications. All of Ted Joans and No More, an illustrated
poetry volume, and his collage novel, The Hipsters, both
appeared in 1961. They incorporate excerpts of Victorian-
era illustration, including colonialist and anatomical
imagery. Included as a reference to the sources Max Ernst
used in his collage novels, they were used to markedly
different ends. The pages displayed here reflect satirically
on the US Beat generation, which, like much of modernism,
was known for appropriating Black cultures.

128
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

Black Power
L’Archibras no.3 March 1968

1968
Journal

Joans met André Breton in 1960 and contributed to Paris

Surrealist activities for the remainder of the decade. His
participation ensured that African American causes became
part of the group’s research and campaigning interests.
Joans wrote in 1968 that Malcolm X, one of his heroes,
‘proposes (what Surrealism has always been) a completely
free revolutionary mode towards the total enfranchisement
of man.’

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006

TGA 200610
Z76055

129
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

X, from the series Alphabet Surreal, collage reproduced in

La Brèche: Action surréaliste (The Breach: Surrealist Action),
no. 5, Paris, October 1963

1963
Journal

Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006

TGA 200610
Z76054

130
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

What is mau mau what is surrealism

1956
Pencil on paper

During the 1960s, the Black Power movement intensified

in North America. Joans was deeply committed to the
cause, presenting its political and cultural demands as
complementary to Surrealism. This drawing links Surrealism
to Mau Mau, a militant Kenyan anti-colonial movement
that originated in the 1950s. ‘Today’s Black flowers,’ he
wrote, ‘are the Mau-Mau of America. Guerilla Surrealists of
the ‘Metropolis.’

Private Collection
X80840

131
Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928– Vancouver, Canada 2003)

Outograph (Zwei Erdferkelforscher Frauleins)

Outograph (Two Aardvarkwatcher young women)

Outograph (Enchanté Demain!)

Outograph (Nice to Meet You Tomorrow!)

Outograph

Outograph

1973
Found photographs and plastic film

Private Collection. X83107, X83108, X83109, X83110

A committed experimenter, Joans made ‘outographs’ in

which he cut out the faces from photographs he discovered
in flea markets. In removing the subjects from these found
portraits, he reimagined the possibilities surrounding
the individuals portrayed, literally opening up new ways
of seeing. These works invite a consideration of social
invisibility, while also deploying a distinctive humour,
suggesting that faces can be swapped in and out as in a
carnival cut-out board.

132
Wall text

TED JOANS, TR AVELLER

Poet, musician, and artist Ted Joans’s identity was shaped

by travel and dislocation. To travel was to discard what he
saw as the constraints of nationality, language, and culture.
He left the US twice in rejection of its systematic racism:
once in the early 1960s, and again, about 30 years later,
following the murder by police officers of Amadou Diallo, a
young Black man in the Bronx.

Joans formally engaged with the Surrealists after a chance

meeting with André Breton in Paris. His saying ‘Jazz is my
religion, Surrealism is my point of view’ reflects the fluidity
of his lifestyle as he moved through North and Central
America, North and West Africa, and Europe.

While travel allowed freedom, it also provided community,

as represented in Long Distance, a more than nine-metre
long collaborative cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse)
drawing that the artist began in 1976. It would move with
Joans, growing with each invited contribution. Produced
over 30 years (two beyond Joans’s own life), between 132
participants, Long Distance extends the Surrealist idea of
collaborative authorship to the people connected through
Joans’s travels.

133
Image caption

Ted Joans while traveling from West to North Africa, 1966.

Image: © Ted Joans estate, courtesy of Laura Corsiglia.
Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris

134
William Klein
(born New York, US 1928)

Extract from Algiers Pan-African Festival

1969
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film,
colour, sound. Running time: 7min

The First Pan-African Festival in Algiers in 1969 promoted

a vision of pan-African strength, celebrating postcolonial
freedom and liberation movements. Klein recorded the
events. Performing at the festival with African American
jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp and Tuareg musicians, Ted
Joans declared ‘We have returned’, a return that was meant
not simply as physical but also cultural. Joans maintained
that jazz was ‘African music’ and that Surrealism originated
from Africa.

Arte Distribution
X83786

135
Vitrine against wall

Mimi Parent
(Mont-Royal, Quebec, Canada 1924 –
Villars-sur-Olon, Switzerland 2005)

With contributions by Hans Bellmer (Kattowitz, Silesia

[present-day Katowice, Poland] 1902 – Paris, France 1975),
Robert Benayoun (Kenitra, Morocco 1926 – Paris, France
1996), Micheline Bounoure (Saint Pierre d’Oleron, France 1924
– Paris 1981), André Breton (Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris,
France 1966), Salvador Dalí (Figueres, Spain 1904 – Figueres,
Spain 1989), Adrien Dax (Toulouse, France 1913 – Toulouse,
France 1979), Marcel Duchamp (Blainville, France 1887 –
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 1968), Arshile Gorky (Khorkom,
Ottoman Empire [present-day Turkey] 1904 – Sherman,
Connecticut, US 1948), Alain Joubert (Paris, France 1936–
2021), Jacques Le Maréchal (Paris, France 1928 – Paris, France
2016), André Pieyre de Mandiargues (Paris, France 1909 –
Paris, France 1991), Joyce Mansour (Bowdon, UK 1928 – Paris,
France 1986), Joan Miró (Barcelona, Spain 1893 – Palma de
Mallorca, Spain 1983), Octavio Paz (Mexico City, Mexico 1914 –
Mexico City, Mexico 1998), Benjamin Péret (Rezé, France 1899
– Paris, France 1959), Max Walter Svanberg (Malmö, Sweden
1912 – Malmo, Sweden 1994), Toyen (Prague, Austria-Hungary
[present-day Czechia] 1902 – Paris, France 1980), and Clovis
Trouille (La Fère, France 1889 – Paris, France 1975)

136
Clockwise from room entrance

Boîte alerte
Box on Alert

1959
Cardboard box, catalogue, telegram on paper,
4 lithographs on paper, etching on paper,
10 envelopes and other materials

Parent assembled Boîte Alerte (Box on Alert) as the deluxe

catalogue for the EROS exhibition organised by André
Breton and Marcel Duchamp in Paris in 1959. The title
is a pun on boîte à lettres (letter box) and the contents

137
include letters, pictures, and booklets by those involved in
the exhibition. Parent conceived this collective work and
contributed an image of her object Masculin / Féminin
(Masculine / Feminine).

Tate. Purchased 2000

T07621

138
ROOM 7

139
Clockwise from room entrance

Wall text

CONVERGENCE POINTS: HAITI, MARTINIQUE , CUBA

Caribbean islands have been both places of convergence

and relay for Surrealism. Many manifestations originated on
the islands in multiple and concurrent waves. In Martinique,
Surrealism took root in 1932, when a group of students,
including writer and theorist René Ménil, produced the
single-issue journal Légitime défense (Self-Defence) from
Paris. It aligned with the Black self-affirmation movement
of Négritude, while also attacking French colonialism. Ménil
– as well as poets Aimé and Suzanne Césaire – carried
Surrealism to Fort-de-France. Their journal, Tropiques,
launched in April 1941 and over its four years of publication,
promoted Surrealism as a critical tool to cast off colonial
dependence and assert Martinique’s own cultural identity.

Surrealism did not travel intact but flowed, fragmented and

was transformed. The focus on freedom found channels
through the writings of Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude
in Haiti, and of Juan Breá and Mary Low in Cuba. Some
connected with travellers, including exiles escaping the war

140
in Europe. These included Eugenio Granell, who settled in
the Dominican Republic in 1939. Two years later, Aimé and
Suzanne Césaire encountered André Breton and Wifredo
Lam, who were held by the authorities in Martinique. Their
friendship strengthened the link between Tropiques and
Surrealist activities in Cuba, Mexico and the US.

141
Hervé Télémaque
(born Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1937)

Eclaireur
The Guide

1962
Oil paint on canvas

Private Collection, Paris

X82721

Télèmaque, whose family was involved in the Black

consciousness movement in Haiti, encountered Surrealism
when he moved to New York to study art. Rejecting
widespread racism in the US, he relocated to Paris in 1962.
There he befriended André Breton and Jorge Camacho, who
had left Cuba in 1959. In this work, made during that time,
forms stretch and change shape across the canvas, like
organic elements undergoing metamorphosis. While not
identifying as a Surrealist, Télémaque has acknowledged
that at one time he negotiated his creative and Caribbean
identity in relation to the movement. He made several
Eclaireur paintings during the two years he associated with
‘Surrealism’, but he selected this one for the exhibition.

142
Hector Hyppolite
(Saint-Marc, Haiti 1894 – Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1948)

Papa Lauco
1945

Oil paint on masonite

Hyppolite was a third-generation Haitian houngan (vodou

priest) and self-taught artist. He painted at the Centre d’art,
the Port-au-Prince art centre. Hyppolite’s paintings, like
this image of the Iwa (spirit) Papa Lauco, engaged with
religious practices of the African diaspora in Haiti. Although
Hyppolite did not consider himself a Surrealist, he exhibited
with them in Paris. Later, he would retire from his religious
work while continuing to paint.

Courtesy of The Museum of Everything, London

X79736

143
Hector Hyppolite
(Saint-Marc, Haiti 1894 – Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1948)

Ogou Feray
Ogoun Ferraille

circa 1945
Oil paint on masonite

On visiting Port-au-Prince in 1945 with Wifredo Lam, André

Breton was enthralled by Hyppolite’s work and wrote in the
guestbook of the Centre d’art: ‘Haitian painting will drink
the blood of the phoenix. And, with the epaulets of [Haitian
revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques] Dessalines, it will
ventilate the world.’ Hyppolite sold Ogou Feray to Breton,
and allowed Papa Lauco to be the first illustration in the
catalogue for Le Surréalisme en 1947 exhibition in Paris.

Courtesy of The Museum of Everything, London

X80908

144
Wifredo Lam
(Sagua la Grande, Cuba 1902 – Paris, France 1982)

Bélial, Empereur des Mouches

Belial, Emperor of the Flies

1948
Oil paint on canvas

Private Collection
X80678

In 1940 Lam returned to Havana after 18 years in Europe.

Inspired by Afro-Cuban religious traditions, he constructed
a new artistic style in opposition to the US social
exploitation and influence in Cuba. In 1945 he travelled
to Port-au-Prince, where he met Haitian artists (including
Hector Hyppolite) and reconnected with André Breton.
Lam also attended vodou ceremonies. In this painting, the
figure on the left is Venus, Roman goddess of love. The one
to the right is both Mars, god of war, and Changó, Yoruba
god of thunder. The word Bélial appears in both Judaic and
Christian texts, as a name for the devil or demonic figures.

145
Eugenio Granell
(A Coruña, Spain 1912 – Madrid, Spain 2001)

El vuelo nocturno del Pájaro Pí

The Pi Bird’s Night Flight

1952
Tempera on cardboard

Granell’s radical politics made him a target of censorship

and persecution in his native Spain. While living in exile
in the Dominican Republic in 1940, he discovered the
emancipatory possibilities of Surrealism. He would live
between the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Puerto
Rico for the next 12 years. Made in Puerto Rico, this
large-scale painting of the mythical Pi bird reflects his
celebration of the natural world, the Indigenous symbols of
the Americas, and his own sense of freedom in his newly
adopted home.

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell,

Santiago de Compostela
X79509

146
Rafael Ferrer
(born San Juan, Puerto Rico 1933)

La escuchamos callar
We Hear Her Silence

1957
Oil paint on canvas

Ferrer studied art in 1953 at the University of Puerto Rico

with the exiled Surrealist Eugenio Granell. Through that
mentorship, Ferrer learned about Surrealism and later,
during a trip to Paris, met poet André Breton and artist
Wifredo Lam; the latter became a friend and key influence.
While not a Surrealist, Ferrer exhibited alongside the
collective El Mirador Azul (The Blue Lookout) in 1956. A doll-
like figure and a floating tongue may be identified among
the abstract forms of this painting.

Francisco & Shirley Vincenty

X80901

147
Cossette Zeno
(born Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 1930)

Ni hablar del peluquín

No Use to Talk about the Little Wig

1952
Oil paint on canvas board

This Surrealist portrait wryly mocks male vanity, with its

witty title and references to hair in the painting. Zeno
countered the conservative teachings of the Universidad de
Puerto Rico with a series of humorous compositions with
feminist messages (pre-dating modern-era feminism). In
1954 Zeno travelled to Paris, where Granell introduced her
to André Breton and the Paris Surrealists. She presented her
work in several group exhibitions in Puerto Rico, including
El Mirador Azul’s March 1956 Exposición de pinturas
(Exhibition of Paintings).

Collection of Jorge Orlando Delgado Vigier

X80838

148
Frances del Valle
(New York, US 1933 – Miami, US 2021)

Guerrero y esfinge
Warrior and Sphinx

c.1957
Oil paint on canvas

Del Valle was a prominent member of El Mirador Azul

(The Blue Lookout). Her compositions combined science
fiction, Taíno folklore, and feminist symbolism, purposefully
diverging from the conservative teachings of the
Universidad de Puerto Rico. She described herself and the
collective as ‘lizards in a place where people found them
repellent.’ Del Valle exhibited regularly with El Mirador
Azul. She also led the group in Surrealist word games,
questionnaires, and automatic writing.

Frances del Valle Artist Collection

X80900

149
Luis Maisonet Crespo
(Hatillo, Puerto Rico 1924 – San Juan, Puerto Rico 2019)

Pas de Deux (Amanecer)

Pas de Deux (Dawn)

1953
Oil paint on canvas

In this dreamlike painting, an imagined performance takes

place between night and day. Pas de deux is a ballet term
for a duet in which dancers perform together. Maisonet
Crespo turned to Surrealism in 1950 while studying art
with Eugenio Granell at the University of Puerto Rico. As a
founding member of El Mirador Azul (The Blue Lookout),
Maisonet Crespo showed work in all four of the group’s
exhibitions.

Museo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.

X79707

150
Eugenio Granell
(A Coruña, Spain 1912 – Madrid, Spain 2001)

Los blasones mágicos del vuelo tropical

The Magical Blazons of Tropical Flight

1947
Oil paint on linen

This is one of Granell’s paintings made in Guatemala. In

his unique Surrealist style, the work fuses mythological
imagery from Indigenous Central American cultures with
references to the region’s tropical birds and plant life. In
addition to his career as a painter, Granell also helped to
spread Surrealism through his classes at the Escuela de
Bellas Artes (School of Fine Arts), radio broadcasts, articles
in the periodical Mediodía (Noon), and other publications.

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell,

Santiago de Compostela
X79508

151
Wall text

EUGENIO GR ANELL , TR AVELLER

As a Spanish Republican, Trotskyist and a Surrealist,

Eugenio Granell went into political exile following the
end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the defeat
of the Spanish Republic. In 1939 Granell escaped to the
Dominican Republic. During his six years there, he worked
as a symphony violinist, held his first exhibition, and
with a group of poets, launched the Surrealist journal La
poesía sorprendida (Poetry Surprised) in 1943. André
Breton and Wifredo Lam also visited the island, resulting in
lifelong friendships.

Under the increasingly authoritarian regime, Granell’s

radical politics became untenable. Relocating to Guatemala
in 1946, he connected with artists and intellectuals
including the painter Carlos Mérida and the poet Luis
Cardoza y Aragón. Arguing with and, ultimately, threatened
by Stalinists, Granell then fled to Puerto Rico, where he
remained until 1957. There he spurred a new interest in
Surrealism, particularly among the university students who
formed the Mirador Azul (Blue Lookout) group. Granell
remained an energetic proponent of Surrealism, seeing
in it ‘freedom for art – and as a consequence, freedom
for mankind’.

152
Image caption

Eugenio Granell with his students Ethel Rios and Hilton

Cummings, Luquillo Beach, Puerto Rico, early 1950.
Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago de Compostela.
Photograph by Hamilton Wright Org. Inc. of Puerto Rico

153
Vitrine against wall

Pinturas: Granell
Paintings: Granell
Universidad de Puerto Rico,
San Juan, September 1949

1949
Exhibition catalogue

In 1946, two months after arriving in Guatemala, Granell

exhibited his paintings in the capital city. When the show
travelled to the Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1949, he was
offered a teaching position. Granell and his family moved
to the island in 1950, where they found stability for the first
time in more than a decade. This catalogue from the Puerto
Rico show features an introduction by Chilean poet Jorge
Millas, who was then also a professor at the university.

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell,

Santiago de Compostela
X82480

154
Exposición de pinturas (Exhibition of Paintings),
Sala de Exposiciones, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan,
March 12, 1956

1956
Exhibition catalogue

Exposición el Mirador Azul (Exhibition of the Blue Lookout),

San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 15, 1957

1957
Exhibition catalogue

In 1956, under Granell’s influence, a number of his students

at the Universidad de Puerto Rico formed El Mirador Azul
(The Blue Lookout), a new Surrealist group. They announced
their arrival with an exhibition held at the University that
year. A second exhibition, held in 1957, featured works by
Granell’s first students, including Luis Maisonet Crespo and
Cosette Zeno, as well as newer members, such as Frances
del Valle.

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago de

Compostela. X82479

Tate Archive, Ithell Colquhoun Papers, Bequeathed by Ithell

Colquhoun 1992: TGA 929/10/3/17. X82478

155
Eugenio Granell
(A Corunña, Spain 1912 – Madrid, Spain 2001)

‘El surrealismo y la libertad’ (Surrealism and Liberty), from

AGEAR (Asociación Guatemalteca de Escritores y Artistas
Revolucionarios [Guatemalan Association of Revolutionary
Writers and Artists]), Guatemala City, December 1948

1948
Journal

From 1947–49, Granell hosted Hablemos de arte

(Let’s Talk about Art), a radio show on Guatemala’s
Radiodifusora T.G.W. He produced two programs on
Surrealism. The November 1948 broadcast ‘El surrealismo
y la libertad’ (Surrealism and Liberty) expressed solidarity
with worldwide struggles for freedom. AGEAR, a pro-
communist journal, later published this revised transcript of
the program.

Colección Fundación Eugenio Granell,

Santiago de Compostela
X82477

156
Vitrine – middle of room

Légitime défense
Legitimate Defence

Paris 1932
Journal

The single-issue journal Légitime défense was published

in 1932 by a group of politically radical Martinican students
in Paris. Writing on Martinican identity and literature in
relation to notions of assimilation into French culture, their
manifesto promoted a Black artistic avant-garde of the
Caribbean, declaring ‘we equally and unreservedly accept
surrealism to which ... we relate our becoming.’

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item. Purchased, 2016 TGA

20161/4
Z76045

157
Tropiques no.2

July 1941
Journal

Tropiques no.11

May 1944
Journal

André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)
with illustrations by André Masson
(Balagny-sur-Thérain, France 1896 – Paris, France 1987)

Martinique charmeuse de serpents

Martinique: Snake Charmer

1948
Book

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (GS.471 / PQ3940 .A47
no.2 (July 1941)). X82923

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends

of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift (GS.473 / PQ3940 .A47

158
no.11 (May 1944)). X82924

Private Collection. X82953

Writers in the Caribbean, including Clément Magloire-Saint-

Aude in Port-au-Prince, claimed Surrealism as a means to
challenge dominant ideologies. In 1939, as Aimé Césaire
prepared for his return to Martinique from Paris, he
published Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of
a Return to My Native Land), that defiantly affirmed Black
identity and island culture while calling for freedom from
French colonial violence. Interest in the book was generated
by Césaire’s influential work, alongside Suzanne Césaire and
René Ménil, on the Surrealist-informed review Tropiques,
which celebrated the literary and cultural identity of
Martinique. In it, Suzanne Césaire hailed Surrealism’s
commitment to ‘human emancipation.’ Breton published
his own book, with illustrations by André Masson, in
which he praised Aimé Césaire’s use of Surrealism as an
anticolonial tool.

159
André Breton
(Tinchebray, France 1896 – Paris, France 1966)
with illustrations by Wifredo Lam
(Sagua la Grande, Cuba 1902 – Paris, France 1982)

Fata Morgana
Buenos Aires

1941
Book

Breton’s book was banned by the French authorities in

Vichy France and this edition was instead published in
Buenos Aires. Lam and Helena Holzer went into exile in
Martinique with Breton and Jacqueline Lamba, where they
met Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, the editors of the magazine
Tropiques. As well as this book Fata Morgana, Lam also
illustrated Lydia Cabrera’s Spanish translation of Aimé
Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal in 1942.

Private Collection
X84104

160
Aimé Césaire
(Basse-Pointe, Martinique 1913 – Fort-de-France,
Martinique 2008)
with illustration by Wifredo Lam
(Sagua la Grande, Cuba 1902 – Paris, France 1982)

‘Colombes et menfenil’
(Doves and Hawks) in Hemisphères (Hemispheres), no.4

1944
Journal

Some of the poems that Aimé Césaire published in

Tropiques, the journal that he co-edited in Fort-de-France,
were distributed more widely. This reinforced a network
of friendships. Césaire sent a typescript to André Breton
in New York, who published them in the Surrealist journal
VVV. He and Suzanne Césaire were staying in Haiti by the
time these poems were included in the bi-lingual New
York journal Hemispheres alongside a recent drawing by
Wifredo Lam.

X84462
Private Collection

161
Doves and Hawks by Aimé Césaire

BEYOND

From the depth of the furious piling up of appalling dreams

new dawns were
rising
rolling their free lion cub heads

nothingness denied what I was seeing by the fresher

light of my shipwrecked eyes
but – sirens hissing from a secret power –
the hunger of botched hours vexed the
fierce eagle
of blood

arms too short lengthened into flames

desires exploded like violent pit-gas in the dark
of cowardly hearts

the weight of dream teetered in the freebooting wind

– wonder of sweet apples for birds of the branches –

and reconciled bands shared riches in

the hand of a woman assassinating the day

162
HAVE NO MERCY

Keep smoking swamp

the rupestral images of the unknown

turn the silent dusk of their laughter toward me

Keep smoking oh swamp sea urchin core

dead stars calmed by marvellous hands gush
from the pulp of my eyes

Translation in English from Clayton Eshleman, Annette Smith,

The Collected Poetry: Aimé Césaire, 1983
X84462

163
Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude
(Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1912 – Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1971)
with introduction by Jean-Louis Bédouin
(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 1929 – Paris, France 1996)

‘Poèmes’ (Poems) in Le Surréalisme même (Surrealism Itself),

no.1

1956
Journal

The poet Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude was knowledgeable

and enthusiastic about Surrealism. Writing in Haiti
Journal in 1941 he observed: ‘Surrealism rejects the
conformist... and allows no limits to the mind’s horizons.’
He was amongst those who welcomed Aimé and Suzanne
Césaire to Port-au-Prince in 1944, and André Breton and
Wifredo Lam a year later. His continuing engagement
with Surrealism is seen in the publication of poems in
Le Surréalisme même in 1956.

Z76165
Tate Archive, Nimai Chatterji collection. Purchased, 2006
TGA 200610

164
ROOM 8

165
Clockwise from room entrance

Ted Joans
(Cairo, Illinois, US 1928 – Vancouver, Canada 2003)

With contributions by (from top to bottom, in order by date)

Conroy Maddox (Ledbury, UK 1912 – London 2005), Gregory
Corso (New York 1930 – Robbinsdale, Minnesota, US 2001),
Secret Simon [Simon Watson Taylor] (Wallingford, UK 1923
– London 2005), Charles Henri Ford (Hazlehurst, Mississippi,
US 1908 – New York 2002), Joyce Mansour (Bowdon, UK
1928 – Paris 1986), Alberto Gironella (Mexico City 1929 –
Mexico City 1999), Jayne Cortez (Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
1934 – New York 2012), Georges Gronier (born Brussels
1934), Malangatana Ngwenya (Matalana, Mozambique
1936 – Matosinhos, Portugal Crevel 2011), Milford Graves
(New York 1941 – New York 2021), Papa Ibra Taal (Tivaouane,
Senegal 1935 – Dakar 2015), Lamine Dolo (Mali), Younousse
Sèye (born Saint Louis, Senegal 1940), Mohamed Ajnakane
(born Marrakesh 1948), Mohamed Mrabet (born Tangier
1936), Paul Bowles (New York 1910 – Tangier 1999), Abdul
Kader El Janabi (born Baghdad 1944), Nanos Valaoritis
(Lausanne, Switzerland 1921 – Athens 2019), Marie
Wilson (Cedarville, California, U.S.A. 1922 – Athens 2017),
Laurens Vancrevel (born Haarlem, Netherlands 1941),

166
Andrei Codrescu (born Sibiu, Romania 1946), Adrian Henri
(Birkenhead, U.K. 1932 – Liverpool 2000), Jim Burns (born
Preston, U.K. 1936), John Digby (born London, 1938), Brion
Gysin (Taplow, UK 1916 – Paris 1986), Valery Oisteanu
(born Karaganda, Kazakhstan 1943), LeRoy Clarke (born
Belmont, Trinidad and Tobago 1938), Jack Micheline (New
York 1929 – Orinda, California, US 1998), Shel Silverstein
(Chicago 1930 – Key West, Florida, US 1999), Michael
Horowitz (born Frankfurt, Germany 1935), Tuli Kupferberg
(New York 1923 – New York 2010), Edouard Roditi (Paris
1910 – Cadiz, Spain 1992), Jean-Jacques Lebel (born Neuilly-
sur-Seine, France 1936), Gentiane Taprah (born Chamonix,
France 1945), David Gascoyne (Harrow, UK 1916– Isle of
Wight, U.K. 2001), Allen Ginsberg (Newark 1926 – New York
1997), Shirley Goldfarb (Altoona, Pennsylvania, US 1925
– Paris 1980), Peter Orlovsky (New York 1933 – Williston,
Vermont, US 2010), Robert Cordier (Binche, Belgium 1933 –
Paris 2020), Cees Buddingh’ (Dordrecht, Netherlands 1918
– Dordrecht, Netherlands 1985), Kazuko Shiraishi (born
Vancouver, 1931), Natasha Ungeheuer (born Blumenfeld,
Germany, 1937), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Bronxville, New
York, US 1919 – San Francisco 2021), Anne Waldman (born
Millville, New Jersey 1945), William S. Burroughs (Saint Louis,
Missouri, US 1914 – Lawrence, Kansas, US 1997), Enrique
Hernández de Jesús (born Mérida, Venezuela, 1947), David
Henderson (born New York, 1942), Nancy Joyce Peters
(born Seattle, Washington, US 1936), Philip Lamantia (San

167
Francisco 1927 – San Francisco 2005), Thom Burns (born
Chicago 1955), Ishmael Reed (born Chattanooga, Tennessee,
US 1938), Ray Johnson (Detroit, Michigan, US 1927 – Sag
Harbor, New York, US 1995), André Laude (Paris 1936 – Paris
1995), Ron Sukenick (New York 1932 – New York 2004), Ruth
Francken (Prague 1924 – Paris 2006), Alan Ansen (New York
1922– Athens 2006), Dorothea Tanning (Galesburg, Illinois,
US 1910 – New York 2012), Barbara Chase-Riboud (born
Philadelphia, 1939), Lou Laurin Lam (Fallun, Sweden 1934 –
Azay-sur-Cher, France 2012), Jim Amaral (born Pleasanton,
California, U.S.A. 1933), Michel Leiris (Paris 1901 – Saint-
Hilaire, France 1990), Robert Lebel (Paris 1901 – Paris 1986),
Amiri Baraka (Newark 1934 – Newark 2014), Amina Sylvia
Jones (born Charlotte, North Carolina, US 1942), Simon
Vinkenoog (Amsterdam 1928 – Amsterdam 2009), Seymour
Krim (New York 1922 – New York 1989), Cecil Taylor (New
York 1929 – New York 2018), Michael McClure (Marysville,
Kansas, US 1932 – Oakland, California, US 2020), Gustavo
Rivera (born Acuña, Mexico 1940), Ahmed Yacoubi (Fez,
Morocco 1928 – New York 1985), Erró (born Snæfellsbær,
Iceland 1932), Dick Higgins (Cambridge, UK 1938 – Quebec
1998), Alison Knowles (born New York 1933), Virginia Cox
(born Detroit 1929), Wole Soyinka (born Abeokuta, Nigeria
1934), Romare Bearden (Charlotte, North Carolina, US 1911
– New York 1988), Jerome Rothenberg (born New York
1931), Victor Hernández Cruz (born Aguas Buenas, Puerto

168
Rico 1949), Taylor Mead (Grosse Pointe, Michigan, US 1924
– Denver 2013), Robert Lebel (Paris 1901 – Paris 1986), Louis
Lehmann (Rotterdam, Netherlands 1920 – Amsterdam
2012), Robert Benayoun (Kenitra, Morocco 1926 – Paris
1996), Vincent Bounoure (Strasbourg 1928 – Paris 1996),
Konrad Klapheck (born Düsseldorf 1935), Roger Cardinal
(Bromley, UK 1940 – Chartham Hatch, UK 2019), Roland
Penrose (London 1900 – East Sussex, UK 1984), Woody Van
Amen (born Eindhoven, Netherlands 1936), Alain Jouffroy
(Paris 1928– Paris 2015), Roberto Matta (Santiago de Chile
1911 – Civitavecchia, Italy 2002), Breyten Breytenbach (born
Bonnievale, South Africa 1939), Pavel Řezníček (Blansko,
Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1942 – Prague
2018), Peter Wood (Heckmondwike, U.K. 1951 – Paris 1999),
Bill Dixon (Nantucket, Massachusetts, US 1925 – North
Bennington, Vermont, US 2010), Ed Clark (New Orleans
1926 – Detroit 2019), Melvin Edwards (born Houston 1937),
Stanley William Hayter (London 1901 – Paris 1988), Mário
Cesariny (Lisbon 1923 – Lisbon 2006), Inácio Matsinhe (born
Lourenço Marques [present-day Maputo], Mozambique,
1945), Edouard Jaguer (Paris 1924 – Paris 2006), Octavio
Paz (Mexico City 1914 – Mexico City 1998), Giovanna (born
Reggio Emilia, Italy 1934), Jean Benoît (Quebec City 1922 –
Paris 2010), John Ashbery (Rochester, New York, US 1927
– Hudson, New York, US 2017), James Rosenquist (Grand
Forks, North Dakota, US 1933 – New York 2017), Hilary
Booth (Greensborough, Victoria 1956 – Canberra 2005),

169
Larry Rivers (New York 1923 – New York 2002), Merton
Simpson (Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A. 1928 – New
York 2013), Robert Creeley (Arlington, Massachusetts,
US 1926 – Odessa, Texas, US 2005), Susana Wald (born
Budapest 1937), Ludwig Zeller (Calama, Chile 1927 – Oaxaca,
2019), Saúl Kaminer (born Mexico City 1952), Lois Mailou
Jones (Boston, Massachusetts, US 1905 – Washington,
D.C. 1998), Penelope Rosemont (born Chicago 1942),
Franklin Rosemont (Chicago 1943 – Chicago 2009), Betye
Saar (born Los Angeles 91926), Tony Pusey (born London
1953), Jacob Lawrence (Atlantic City, New Jersey, US 1917 –
Seattle 2000), Eva Švankmajerová (Kostelec nad Černými
lesy, Czechoslovakia [present-day Czechia] 1940 – Prague
2005), Martin Stejskal (born Prague, 1944), Ludvik Sváb
(Prague 1924 – Gargano, Italy 1997), Philip West (York, UK
1949 – Zaragoza, Spain 1997), Skunder Boghossian (Addis
Ababa 1937 – Washington, D.C. 2003), Robert Lavigne
(Saint Maries, Idaho 1928 – San Francisco 2014), Mark
Brusse (born Alkmaar, Netherlands 1937), Homero Aridjis
(born Michoacán, Mexico 1940), Robert Colescott (Oakland,
California, US 1925 – Tucson, Arizona, US 2009), Robert
Farris Thompson (born El Paso, Texas, US 1932), Quincy
Troupe (born Saint Louis, Missouri, US 1939), Bruce Conner
(McPherson, Kansas, US 1903 – San Francisco 2008), David
Hammons (born Springfield, Illinois, US 1943), Ron Sakolsky
(born New York 1945), and Laura Corsiglia (born Vancouver,
1973)

170
Long Distance

1976–2005
Ink and collage on perforated computer paper

Joans’s equation of Surrealism, travel, and community is

powerfully represented in Long Distance, a more than
nine-metre-long cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawing
that the artist began in 1976. It would move with Joans
to London, Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, New York, Rome,
Berlin, Mexico City, Toronto, and beyond, growing with
invited contributions. With a production span of thirty
years (two beyond Joans’s own life) and 132 participants,
Long Distance extends the Surrealist idea of collaborative
authorship to the people he united through his travels.

Private collection
X80830

171
Distance ‘Skins’

1976–2005
Paper and plastic bags and envelopes with printed papers,
string, and ink

Joans called the envelopes and bags in which he carried

Long Distance, the ‘skins’ of the work.

Private Collection
X84339

172
ROOM 9

173
Clockwise from room entrance

Taro Okamoto
(Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan 1911 – Tokyo, Japan 1996)

Roten/Boutique Foraine
Fairground Stall

1937, repainted 1949

Oil paint on canvas

After studying in Tokyo, Okamoto settled in Paris from

1932 to 1940, where he exhibited in the 1938 Exposition
internationale du surréalisme. He studied under the
sociologist Marcel Mauss at the Sorbonne, and joined
a group of intellectuals around Georges Bataille, who
investigated the irrational and ritual found in places
like carnivals and flea markets. Okamoto maintained his
interest in Surrealism long after he returned to Japan at the
outbreak of the Second World War.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift of the

artist, 1983
X80907

174
Wall text

BE YOND RE A SON

In Western Europe, modern political and intellectual

thought was structured by the Enlightenment, an
intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that
promoted science, empirical knowledge and reason as
the hallmarks of society. This attitude complemented the
ideology of European imperial expansion and emphasised
the importance of categorising and collecting knowledge.
For Surrealists and their sympathisers, especially in Europe
and North America, rejecting this oppressive rationalism
meant liberating the mind from outdated modes of thought
and behaviour. Surrealist artists have sought to challenge
‘order’ by using visually precise techniques to create
irrational images. This could be through extreme contrasts
of form and scale, or by embedding apparently illustrative
images in compositions that are anything but rational.

This aspect of Surrealism has been interpreted by artists

in different ways. In Japan in the late 1920s and early
1930s, some artists – confronted with economic and
political pressures, and the criticism of Surrealism as
merely escapist – sought to distinguish their approach,
identifying ‘rishi (reason) as its only weapon’. In deflecting
this politically-motivated attention, driven by the state’s

175
shift to authoritarian militarism, they proposed ‘an even
higher form of Surrealism – a new Surrealism which is
Scientific Surrealism’. Various forms of Surrealism in Japan
both celebrated and interrogated modern technologies,
science, and reason in order to question the meaning of art,
conventional ways of thinking, and cultural norms.

176
Konrad Klapheck
(born Düsseldorf, Germany 1935)

Alphabet der Leidenschaft

Alphabet of Passion

1961
Oil paint on canvas

Klapheck’s composition involves a form of Surrealist

disorientation. It presents 20 nearly identical bicycle bells,
each with their own colour scheme. Here, the accumulation
and orderly presentation of everyday objects renders them
strange. José Pierre, part of the Paris Surrealist group, saw
the image as a catalogue of sexual positions, with the
open ‘female’ form of the cog penetrated by the ‘male’
propeller. ‘Klapheck contributed this work to Princip Slasti
(The Pleasure Principle) the 1968 Surrealist exhibition
in Czechoslovakia.’

Collection Klapheck
X79818

177
Enrico Baj
(Milan, Italy 1924 – Vergiate, Italy 2003)

Ultracorpo in Svizzera
Body Snatcher in Switzerland

1959
Oil paint, collage, and padding on ready-made canvas

Baj referred to this monstrous, humanoid form as a ‘Body

Snatcher’ after the 1956 horror film Invasion of the Body
Snatchers. Painted on a kitschy reclaimed canvas, the
artist’s unique humour and Pop sensibilities are evident.
Baj forged a connection with Surrealism after he met André
Breton around 1957, becoming involved with the Surrealist-
related group Phases. This work was included in a 1964
Phases exhibition in Brussels, where it was called L’arrivée
du martien (The Arrival of the Martian).

Private collection, courtesy Fondazione Marconi Milan

X79479

178
Wilhelm Freddie
(Copenhagen, Denmark 1909 – Copenhagen, Denmark 1995)

Min kone ser pa benzinmotoren hunden ser paa mig

My Wife Looks at the Petrol Engine, the Dog Looks at Me

1940
Oil paint on masonite

Freddie was among those in Copenhagen drawn to

Surrealism after the 1935 Kubisme-Surrealisme exhibition.
He used his detailed style to undermine rationality, claiming
that the subconscious was the only way to express ‘the
mystery of our existence and the enigma and strangeness
of our surroundings’. He is said to have completed this
complex painting after escaping from authorities in Nazi-
occupied Denmark, to the safety of neutral Sweden.

Schroeder Collection
X79766

179
René Magritte
(Lessines, Belgium 1898 – Brussels, Begium 1967)

La durée poignardée
Time Transfixed

1938
Oil paint on canvas

The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham

Collection, 1970.426
X77678

Aided by the poet Paul Nougé and others, Magritte focused

on ‘elective affinities’ – obscure associations he perceived
between objects. Magritte explained: ‘I decided to paint the
image of a locomotive. In order for its mystery to be evoked,
another immediately familiar image without mystery – the
image of a dining room fireplace – was joined.’ The details
are modelled on the Wimpole Street home of the London
art collector Edward James, who bought the painting on
completion. Magritte was part of the Brussels Surrealist
group formed in 1924 and spent time in Paris between 1927
and 1930.

180
Koga Harue
(Kurume, Japan 1895 – Tokyo, Japan 1933)

Umi
The Sea

1929
Oil paint on canvas

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

X79926

Koga’s work, Umi (The Sea), contains various images and

symbols that he gathered together from magazines and
postcards. Against the continuing industrialisation of 1920s
Japan and the criticism of Surrealism as merely escapist, a
strand of Scientific Surrealism emerged that responded to,
rather than avoided, those social, economic and political
realities. Koga incorporated scientific diagrams and
contemporary machine imagery into his works, reflecting
kikai-shugi (‘machine-ism’). His juxtapositions of scale and
the strange relationships between objects express a belief
in a subjective world beyond reason, or a ‘dissatisfaction
with reality.’

181
Gerome Kamrowski
(Warren, Minnesota, US 1914 – Ann Arbor, Michigan,
US 2004)

Embalmed Universe

circa 1939
Shadow-box collage

Ubu Gallery, New York

X81425

This is one of a number of shadow-boxes that Kamrowski

made in New York in 1939–40. The openings cut in
the black card reveal images from scientific textbooks
or magazines, framed and linked by white lines that
both suggest and subvert logical connections. This
demonstrates one of the Surrealist’s shared principles
of challenging rationalism and subverting conventional
aesthetics. The series was inspired by a visit to the Museum
of Natural History, where the artist noted ‘the dioramas
had the quality of being like an installation’. Kamrowski
disrupted these scientific certainties, exploring instead
an irrational accumulation of imagery in sympathy with
what the Surrealists termed the ‘marvellous’ – an excitingly
disorientating sensation.

182
Helen Lundeberg
(Chicago, US 1908 – Los Angeles, US 1999)

Plant and Animal Analogies

1933–34
Oil paint on Celotex

The Buck Collection at the UCI Institute and Museum of

California Art
X80817

In this unsettling image, Lundeberg brings together

elements such as a knife and cherries, alongside scientific
and botanical details. This references encyclopedic
illustrations, but presented in a completely irrational way.
Lundeberg organised the Los Angeles ‘Post Surrealists’ in
1934, the only interwar Surrealist group in the US. They
bypassed automatism and dream imagery in favour of
provocative juxtapositions and careful compositions. Their
manifesto (1934), written by the artist and illustrated
with this painting, promoted an art that was ‘an ordered,
pleasurable, introspective activity; an arrangement of
emotions or ideas. The pictorial elements function only to
create this subjective form; either emotional or mood-entity,
or intellectual or idea-entity.’

183
Victor Brauner
(Romanian, Piatra Neamt 1903 – Paris, France 1966)

Nous sommes trahis

We are Betrayed

1934
Oil on canvas

Private collection
X82476

Brauner combined an interest in the subconscious with

an awareness of folkloric beliefs of his native Romania.
They seem to fuel the disconcerting interaction between
the mannequin and animal in this haunting painting. The
air of threat reinforced by the title may also relate to the
contemporary upsurge of political extremism in Europe,
from Nazism in Germany and Stalinism in Russia. André
Breton, who wrote the catalogue introduction to Brauner’s
solo exhibition in Paris in 1935, immediately acquired this
painting from the show.

184
Toyen
(Prague, Austria-Hungary [present-day Czechia] 1902 – Paris,
France 1980)

L’un dans l’autre

The One in the Other

1965
Oil paint on canvas
Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de Création
Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, purchased by the state,
1968 (AM 2009-66)
X77686

Toyen, a founder of the Czech Surrealist group in 1934,

had been forced into hiding during the Nazi occupation
of Prague. After the war, the artist – who had adopted a
gender-neutral name – joined the Surrealists in Paris and
renounced Czech citizenship. Toyen sent this painting to
Princip slasti (The Pleasure Principle), a 1968 Surrealist
exhibition that toured Brno, Prague, and Bratislava. It was a
rare opportunity to see Surrealism behind the Iron Curtain,
east of the Cold War European boundary. The mysterious
composition refers to a game played by the Paris group that
merges contrasting elements from the unconscious into a
new, hybrid form.

185
Maya Deren, director
(Kiev, Ukraine 1917 – New York, US 1961)

At Land
1944

Single-channel digital video, transferred from 16mm, black-

and-white, silent

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative/The New American Cinema

Group, Inc.
X83784

At Land alludes to the sense of dislocation expressed

in the French term dépaysement (‘the state of being
unlanded’). Surrealists often sought to approach this
poetic state, in order to arrive at a newly productive place
of awareness. With the political and social upheavals of
the last century, dépaysement also relates to the more
serious realities of displaced peoples, exiles, and diasporic
communities. Deren denied that At Land was Surrealist,
but acknowledged that the shared concerns of her circle
of friends (including wartime refugees Dorothea Tanning,
Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp) were important to her in
conceiving the film.

186
Alberto Giacometti
(Borgonovo, Switzerland 1901 – Chur, Switzerland 1966)

Cage

1930–31
Wood

Giacometti joined the Paris Surrealists in 1930 at the

invitation of André Breton, who was so impressed by one
of his sculptures that he purchased it immediately for his
collection. A year later, steeped in the activities of the
group, the sculptor explored the concept of a cage into
which elements could be set. Organic, mantis-like forms
are captured and compressed, suggesting specimens for
observation and expressing hidden sexual violence.

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Purchase, 1964

(The Museum of our Wishes)
X77709

187
Lionel Wendt
(Colombo, Ceylon [present-day Sri Lanka] 1900 – Colombo,
Ceylon [present-day Sri Lanka] 1944)

[title not known]

c.1934–7

[title not known]

c.1933–8

Untitled
after 1934

Photographs, gelatin silver prints on paper

Purchased with funds provided by the South Asia

Acquisitions Committee 2013
P80196, P80198, P80370

Living in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Wendt learned of Surrealism

through the photographs of Man Ray, published in
international magazines. He began to collaborate with Sri
Lankan subjects, people who until then had only been
portrayed by Western photographers in ethnographic
terms. While not a Surrealist, Wendt used Surrealism to
explore more personal themes, balancing female nudes
with his erotic photographs of same-sex desire featuring

188
male nudes posed as classical sculptures. These works,
exhibited in London in 1938 and Colombo in 1940.

Ithell Colquhoun
(Shillong, India 1906 – Lamorna, UK 1988)

Scylla

1938
Oil paint on board

The title of this work refers to the female monster who,

according to ancient Greek mythology, inhabited a narrow
channel of water and fed on passing sailors. Colquhoun
explained that the image could be understood in two
ways, both as a seascape and as an image of her own
body. ‘It was suggested by what I could see of myself in
a bath ... it is thus a pictorial pun, or double-image’. The
rock formations can also be seen as knees, with seaweed
in place of pubic hair. She was an active member of the
London Surrealists in the late 1930s.

Purchased 1977
T02140

189
Hans Bellmer
(Kattowitz, Silesia [present-day Katowice, Poland] 1902 –
Paris, France 1975)

La Poupée
The Doll

c.1937-8
Photographs, black and white, and ink on paper

Constructed in early 1930s Berlin, Bellmer’s fetishistic

doll sculptures were partly inspired by a short story in
which the protagonist falls in love with a mechanical doll
(written by E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1817). In their exploration
of eroticism, sadism and psychic anxiety, they can also be
read as a rejection of Germany’s rising authoritarianism. On
moving to Paris Bellmer was welcomed by the Surrealist
group. His photographs of dolls were published in the Paris
journal Minotaure.

Presented anonymously through the Friends of the Tate

Gallery 1978
T02305

190
Wall text

Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the

situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. If
it existed in our language no one would be able to see my
thought’s vacillations. I’d be a worker bee for good.

Claude Cahun, 1930

191
Claude Cahun
(Nantes, France 1894 – Saint Helier, Jersey 1954)

Autoportrait
Self-portrait (Double exposure in rock pool)

Autoportrait
Self-portrait (Kneeling, naked, with mask)

Autoportrait
Self Portrait (Reflected image in mirror, checked jacket)

1928, printed 2021

Exhibition copies of gelatin silver prints

Courtesy of Jersey Heritage Collections

X80690, X80668, X79659

A politically engaged Surrealist, Cahun, in partnership with

Marcel Moore, made images that express a defiant sense
of desire. With Cahun as subject, they present characters
that are gender fluid and defy categories or boundaries.
These include familiar personages such as the pantomime
character, the Pierrot.

Elaborating on the self-portrait, Cahun’s face and body is

treated as material to be sculpted, pared down, or doubled.

192
While this new self functions as both fetish and parody, the
interrogation is always on the artist’s own terms. In doing
so, Cahun not only diverts the conventional male gaze but
also opens a space for the viewer’s own experience.

193
Wall text

BODIES OF DESIRE

May my desires be fulfilled on the fertile soil

Of your body without shame.

These lines from Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour’s Cris (Cries,

1953) offer a counterbalance to traditional narratives about
Surrealism, sexuality, and desire. The exploration of the
unconscious has long presented Surrealist artists with a
means to challenge forms of repression and exclusion
dictated by prevailing social conventions. The most well-
known examples have been those – such as Alberto
Giacometti’s The Cage and Hans Bellmer’s manipulated
photographs – that reflect the complicated desires of
heterosexual men and their gaze upon the female body.

The subject of desire is a recurrent theme in art associated

with Surrealism and it has also encompassed more fluid
identifications of gender and sexuality. For example, Lionel
Wendt’s intimate studies of nudes explore the fluidity of
desire, while Claude Cahun’s defiant performance of self-
identity also challenges fixed notions of gender. These
images question traditional notions of privilege and power,
while also acting as representations of the artists’ desires
and fantasies.

194
Directed and written by
Enrique Grau
(Panama City, Panama 1920 – Bogotá, Colombia 2004)
Gabriel Garciá Márquez
(Aracataca, Colombia 1927 – Mexico City, Mexico 2014)
Alvaro Cepeda Samudio
(Barranquilla, Colombia 1926 – New York, US 1972)
Luis Vicens
(Barcelona, Spain 1904 – Mexico City, Mexico 1983)

La Langosta azul
The Blue Lobster

1954
Single-channel digital video, transferred from 16mm, black-
and-white, silent

Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano

X83764

This film features artistic friends from the Grupo de

Barranquilla. The photographer Nereo López plays ‘El
Gringo’ (The Foreigner), artist and poet Enrique Grau ‘El
Brujo’ (The Sorcerer), and painter Cecilia Porras, who also
led lighting and costumes, ‘La Hembra’ (The Female).
Conceived as an homage to the Spanish filmmaker
Luis Buñuel, whom Luis Vicens knew in Paris, the film

195
cuts between the story of a foreigner looking for signs
of radioactive contamination in local lobsters, and a
documentary of the everyday life of fishermen. While
fictional, it offers contemporary commentary on the impact
of the Cold War.

Wall text

CECILIA PORR A S AND ENRIQUE GR AU

Between 1954 and 1958, artists Cecilia Porras and Enrique

Grau formed an artistic collaboration that found an outlet
in the work they made along Colombia’s Atlantic coast.
Hearing about the Surrealist movement through migrant
artists from Europe arriving in the Americas via Puerto
Colombia, they became associated with the Grupo de
Barranquilla (Barranquilla Group). As part of this community
of artists and writers, they collaborated on the Surrealist
film La langosta azul (The Blue Lobster) in 1954.

Porras and Grau went on to create experimental

photographs that can be read as sequels to their
experiences while working on the film. They may also be
seen as catalysts for exploring identity through Porras’s
performance for the camera, as well as challenging the

196
limits of expression under political and cultural censorship.
During the rule of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953–
57), the government systematically blocked demands for
cultural freedom. On top of existing conservative social
norms and restrictions, this political shift drove artists and
intellectuals to explore allegorical means of escape. Porras
and Grau continued to make work under these restrictions,
their photographs remaining hidden in a private album
for years.

Image caption

Cecilia Porras (left) and Enrique Grau (right).

Archivo El Universal. Cortesía Amigos del MAMC; Hernán
Díaz - Cortesía Rafael Moure

197
Vitrine against wall

Cecilia Porras
(Cartagena, Colombia 1920 – Cartagena, Colombia 1971)
Enrique Grau
(Panama City, Panama 1920 – Bogotá, Colombia 2004)

Top row: From the series Untitled

Middle row: From the series Paseo a La Boquilla (Day Trip to

La Boquilla)

Bottom row: From the series La Divina (The Divine One)

1958, printed 2022

Exhibition copies of gelatin silver prints

198
Courtesy of Fundación Enrique Grau Araujo, Bogotá,
Colombia
X79519, X79639, X82964, X79520, X79524, X79634, X79636,
X79637, X79638, X79518, X79522, X79635, X79640

The photographs that Porras and Grau produced together

fall into distinct series, including ‘Paseo a La Boquilla’ (A Day
Trip to La Boquilla), and ‘Puerto Colombia’ both from 1958.
They mainly feature Porras in a performative role. Through
asserting her independent creativity, she defied class and
gender expectations in conventional Colombian society.
Although not intended for public display, they are carefully
conceived and posed, using backlighting, steep angles,
and the fragmentation of the body. The results achieve a
dreamlike vision that interested both collaborators.

199
ROOM 10

200
Clockwise from room entrance

Wall text

CONVERGENCE POINT: C AIRO

In the months before the outbreak of the Second World War,

with European nationalism on the rise, Surrealists in Cairo
came together to form a vocal resistance. The group issued
a manifesto in December 1938 written by Georges Henein
with 37 signatories. Its’ title, Yahya al-fann al-munhatt /
Vive l’art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate Art), references
the Nazis’s denunciation of modernist art as ‘degenerate’
and in conflict with their fascist ideology.

The group of artists and writers known as al-Fann wa-l-

Hurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty), used both the
Arabic and French terms for ‘free art’ as the framework for
their Surrealist practice. Strongly critical of conservatism
and the ongoing colonial British presence in Egypt, they
aligned themselves with ‘revolutionary, independent’
art liberated from state interference, traditional values,
and dominant ideologies. In this they responded to
ideas articulated in the 1938 manifesto Pour un art
revolutionnaire (Towards a Revolutionary Art). Drafted by

201
André Breton and Leon Trotsky at the Mexico City home of
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, it called for an international
front in defence of artistic freedom. While a part of this
international community, and in communication with the
global network of Surrealists, the Cairo group was also of its
place, expressing local concerns and incorporating Egyptian
motifs and symbols into their work.

Image caption

Members of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya/Art et Liberté at their

second exhibition, Cairo, 1941.
From left: Jean Moscatelli, Albert Cossery, Kamel El
Telmissany, unidentified, Angelo de Riz (kneeling), Georges
Henein, Maurice Fahmy, Ramses Younan, Raoul Curiel,
Fouad Kamel. Image courtesy Younan Family Archive

202
Lee Miller
(Poughkeepsie, New York, US 1907 – Chiddingly, East Sussex,
UK 1977)

Portrait of Space, Al Bulyaweb, Near Siwa, Egypt

1937, printed 1999

Photograph, platinum print on paper

The Cloud Factory, Assyut, Egypt

1939, printed 2007

Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper

Lee Miller Archives, East Sussex, England. X83593

Lee Miller Archives, East Sussex, England. X83594

In Portrait of Space, Miller captures the desert landscape

from behind a damaged fly screen. She contrasts interior
and exterior spaces in one frame, reflecting the Surrealist’s
interest in pushing beyond the conscious mind to focus
on the unconscious and dreams. Miller provided a vital
link between Cairo, Paris and London. Having married the
businessman, Aziz Eloui Bey, she arrived in Cairo in 1935,
bringing publications and artworks from her years in Paris

203
Surrealist circles. The desert landscape provided Miller with
subjects that she approached from unusual angles. She also
facilitated the republication of the manifesto Yahya al-fann
al-munhatt / Vive l’art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate Art),
in French and Arabic, in the Surrealists’ London Bulletin in
April 1939.

204
Ida Kar
(Tambov, Russia 1908 – London, UK 1974)

Surreal Study

c.1940
Gelatin silver print

Ida Kar
(Tambov, Russia 1908 – London, UK 1974)
Edmond Belali
(Egypt)

L’Etreinte
The Embrace

c.1940
Vintage bromide print

National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG x133323). X79741

H.H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan. X80679

Kar and her first husband Edmond Belali founded the

photographic studio Idabel in Cairo in the 1930s. They
contributed photographs to the exhibitions mounted by al-
Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty). Kar’s

205
Surreal Study suggests an archaeology of body parts that
may carry over to their collaborative work L’étreinte (The
Embrace). Through angle and detail, L’étreinte might recall
presentations of Egyptian monuments. Closer inspection
reveals a different sort of decay: the paired forms are the
partially stripped ribs of an animal carcass.

206
Georges Henein
(Cairo, Egypt 1914 – Paris, France 1973)

Portrait surréaliste de Gulperie Efflatoun

Surrealist Portrait of Gulperie Efflatoun

1945
Gelatin silver developing-out paper print

The writer Gulperie Efflatoun was part of the Cairo collective

al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty),
alongside her sister, the artist Inji Efflatoun. Henein’s
photograph is a testament to the collaborative nature and
wide network of the group. By playfully capturing Efflatoun’s
face behind a lamp stand, he renders her portrait strange.
Gulperie Eflatoun Collection, courtesy of the Arab Image

Foundation, Beirut
X79478

207
Kamel El Telmisany
(Nawa, Qalyubiyya District, Egypt 1915 – Beirut,
Lebanon 1972)

Blessure
Wound

1940
Gouache, charcoal and wax on paper

El Telmissany Family, Cairo-Egypt

X79470

Telmisany’s Surrealist practice was international but with

a local focus, sourcing images and ideas from Egyptian
culture. In 1939 he remarked that Surrealism was not a
‘specifically French movement’ but that it was ‘defined by
the globalism of its thinking and its actions...Have you
heard stories or poems from local, popular literature? ...
All of these, Sir, are Surrealist. Have you seen the Egyptian
Museum? ... Much of pharaonic art is Surrealist.’ Here,
the grotesque depiction of a woman pierced with stakes
reflects the social and political oppression of women
in Egypt.

208
Amy Nimr
(Cairo, Egypt 1898 – Paris, France 1974)

Untitled (Anatomical Corpse)

1940
Gouache and ink on paper

Sheikh Hassan M. A. Al Thani

X79649

The delicate, yet macabre, corpse in this work suggests

a poem by Nimr’s colleague Georges Henein, who wrote
about a body resting like a ‘magnetic flower ... on the
whole indecipherable bottom of the sea.’ Nimr played an
important role in promoting Surrealism in Egypt. Trained in
London, she exhibited in Paris before returning to Cairo. Her
home became a centre for intellectual and creative activity,
and she was a key member of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art
et Liberté (Art and Liberty), regularly contributing to the
group exhibitions.

209
Laurent Marcel Salinas
(Alexandria, Egypt 1913 – Saint Louis, US 2010)

Naissance
Birth

1944
Oil paint on board

Salinas signed the 1938 group manifesto Yahya al-fann

al-munhatt / Vive l’art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate
Art). It declared art a means to liberate society and the
individual from the ‘artificial restrictions’ of nationality,
religion, and ethnicity. Salinas’s choice of a disembodied
and tentacled eye explores a subject frequently depicted by
Surrealists as a surrogate for male castration anxieties – the
naked eyeball.

Courtesy of RoGallery
X81614

210
Inji Efflatoun
(Cairo, Egypt 1924 – Cairo, Egypt 1989)

La jeune fille et le monstre

Young Girl and the Monster

1942
Oil paint on canvas

A prominent member of the Cairo Surrealist group, Efflatoun

created images of women menaced by monstrous forces.
She was active in Egyptian feminist and Marxist circles,
promoting anti-colonial policies and denouncing the
oppression of women. She understood painting, in part,
as an extension of her political activism. Efflatoun’s dark
palette, bold painterly style, and apocalyptic subjects
reflect both the socio-political climate of 1940s Egypt and
the Surrealist concern with hallucinatory landscapes.

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar.

MAT.2013.16.27
X81703

211
Fouad Kamel
(Beni Suef, Egypt 1919 – Cairo, Egypt 1973)

Untitled

1940
Oil paint on cardboard

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar.

MAT.2013.16.25
X81704

The core members of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté

(Art and Liberty) often included a woman’s figure in their
works as a symbol of Egypt’s social inequalities and as
a provocation for progression. They blamed patriarchal
attitudes embedded in society for gender inequality and
women’s lack of access to education and professional
opportunities. While women subjects are frequent sources
of mystic and sexual power in Surrealist works, the
distorted bodies of women in paintings such as Kamel’s
enact a critique of Egyptian society. They also serve as a
break from a long-standing colonial tradition, known as
Orientalism, of exoticising Egyptian women and portraying
them as lustful characters.

212
Ramses Younan
(Minya, Egypt 1913 – Cairo, Egypt 1966)

Sans titre
Untitled

1939
Oil paint on canvas

Sheikh Hassan M. A. Al-Thani

X79648

Here, Younan presents the body of Nut, the goddess of the

sky, broken and twisted. In Surrealism he saw a vehicle
of liberation, particularly from British colonialism and the
restrictions of contemporary Egyptian society. Although in
dialogue with artists and poets in other centres of Surrealist
activity, Younan criticised the work of Salvador Dalí and
René Magritte as premeditated, and the practitioners
of automatism as not sufficiently engaged with society.
Instead, he advocated a synthesis of Surrealist techniques
and Egyptian cultural imagery, while avoiding romanticising
Egypt as a subject.

213
Samir Rafi‘
(Cairo, Egypt 1926 – Paris, France 2004)

Nus
Nudes

1945
Oil paint on canvas

Sheikh Hassan M. A. Al-Thani

X81701

In this canvas by Rafi’, a group of nude women attempt to

flee a decaying and threatening landscape. It echoes acts of
British colonial violence and the anxious aftermath of the
Second World War. In the mid-1940s, younger artists with
ties to the Cairo Surrealist group rejected its international
connections and the label of Surrealism, in favour of a
more national and local focus. However, works produced
by members of al-Fann al-Misri al-Mu‘asir or Groupe de
l’art contemporain (Contemporary Art Group), founded
about 1946, nonetheless advanced many of Art and
Liberty’s interests.

214
Wall text

CONVERGENCE POINT: ME XICO CIT Y

In Mexico City, as in other locations, taking up Surrealism

meant grappling with the dual forces of internationalism
and nationalism. Mexican Muralism and Diego Rivera,
David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco’s grand
narrative murals had taken on an official government role
since the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). During the 1930s,
however, the poets and artists of Los Contemporáneos
(The Contemporaries), including María Izquierdo, distanced
themselves from muralism and, along with Frida Kahlo,
forged connections with Surrealism.

With its open-door policy, Mexico was a welcoming home

to those fleeing totalitarian Europe. Including the political
revolutionary Leon Trotsky (exiled from the Soviet Union),
the circles around Kahlo and Rivera were internationalist,
and it was through their encouragement that many
Surrealists arrived in Mexico City. Further attention came
with the work of poet César Moro, who organised the 1940
Exposición internacional del surrealismo.

A core community of Surrealist artists who came together

in Mexico City were women. In the particular case of
Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, their friendship

215
involved the study of Mexico’s Indigenous cultures and
archaeological sites. Influenced by occult and alchemical
sources, these artists also infused Surrealism with feminism,
magic, and natural forces.

Image caption

Wedding of Leonora Carrington and Emerico ‘Chiki’ Weisz

with their guests on the patio of the house of Kati and
José Horna, Tabasco Street 198, Colonio Roma, Mexico
City, 1946. Photograph by Kati Horna. © Ana María Norah
Horna Fernandez; courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery / image
supplied by Lund Humphries

216
Leonora Carrington
(Clayton Green, UK 1917 – Mexico City, Mexico 2011)

Chiki, ton pays

Chiki, Your Country

1944
Oil paint, tempera and ink on canvas

Private Collection
X79824

Carrington arrived in Mexico City as a refugee from

occupied France and quickly became a central figure of the
Surrealist circle there. This painting narrates an experience
of exile: a fantastical vehicle carries a pregnant woman and
a man to a place of bountiful nature. Carrington depicts
herself alongside the Hungarian photographer Emerico
‘Chiki’ Weisz, who became her husband. Below, the ground
opens onto an underworld inhabited by women who float
amid animals and esoteric symbols, suggesting a magical
union of woman and nature.

217
Alice Rahon
(Chenecey-Buillon, France 1904 – Mexico City, Mexico 1987)

La Balada para Frida Kahlo

The Ballad for Frida Kahlo

1955–56
Oil paint on canvas

Acervo Museo de Arte Moderno/Secretaría de Cultura

X79711

In this painting, with its cobalt blue background, Rahon

celebrates Kahlo and her legendary Casa Azul (Blue House).
Seeing Kahlo’s distinctive paintings in the 1939 Paris
exhibition, Mexique inspired some Surrealists to experience
Mexico for themselves. Rahon (along with Eva Sulzer and
Wolfgang Paalen) arrived there just as war was declared in
Europe. They stayed in San Angel, south of Mexico City, near
Kahlo’s home, a hub for visiting artists and intellectuals.
Rahon, a poet who began to paint in Mexico, established a
lifelong friendship with Kahlo, which she commemorated in
La balada para Frida Kahlo (The Ballad for Frida Kahlo) after
Kahlo’s death in 1954.

218
Gunther Gerzso
(Mexico City, Mexico 1915 – Mexico City, Mexico 2000)

Los días de la calle Gabino Barreda

The Days of Gabino Barreda Street

1944
Oil paint on canvas

Private collection
X80676

In this painting Gerzso depicts the gathering of exiles

in Mexico City. Remedios Varo and Benjamin Péret had
moved there in 1941 after the fall of the Spanish Republic
and France to the Nazis. Leonora Carrington and Esteban
Francés soon joined them in the neighbourhood of Colonia
San Rafael, arriving via New York. Their circle also included
other artists who, while not previously linked to Surrealism,
would share in its spirit. These included Gerzso, the
Hungarian photographer Kati Horna, and her husband, the
Spanish sculptor José Horna.

219
Remedios Varo
(Anglès, Spain 1908 – Mexico City, Mexico 1963)

Hacia la torre
To the Tower

1961
Oil paint on canvas

Private Collection, Mexico City

X79746

Remedios Varo
(Anglès, Spain 1908 – Mexico City, Mexico 1963)

Bordando el manto terrestre

Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle

1961
Oil paint on canvas

Private Collection, Chicago

X79745

220
Remedios Varo
(Anglès, Spain 1908 – Mexico City, Mexico 1963)

La huída
The Flight

1961
Oil paint on canvas

Acervo Museo de Arte Moderno.INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura

X79712

221
María Izquierdo
(San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico 1902 – Mexico City,
Mexico 1955)

Alegoría del trabajo

Allegory of Work

1936
Watercolour and tempera on paper

Alegoría del trabajo (Allegory of Work) is one of a group

of intense paintings made by Izquierdo in the 1930s.
They combine unexpected images and poetic titles, seen
here in the figure witnessing cosmic signs in the volcanic
landscape of Mexico. Izquierdo’s colleagues at the journal
Los Contemporáneos described the works as possessing a
visionary force. Her paintings excited the former Surrealist
Antonin Artaud on his visit to Mexico in 1936, encouraging
him to arrange her exhibition in Paris.

Colección Andrés Blaisten, México

X82957

222
María Izquierdo
(San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico 1902 – Mexico City,
Mexico 1955)

Calabazas con pan de muerto

Squash with Pan de Muerto

1947
Oil paint on canvas

Izquierdo joined a tight community of women Surrealists

who convened in Mexico during the Second World War.
Although she did not directly identify with the movement’s
aims, her work bears their influence in its distortion of scale
and reference to the Indigenous cultures of Mexico. Her
1947 still life assembles foods associated with the Día de
los Muertos (Day of the Dead): green squash used to make
calabaza candies and sugar-coated sweet bread.

Private collection
X82958

223
Vitrine – middle of room

Georges Henein
(Cairo, Egypt 1914 – Paris, France 1973)
Ramses Younan
(Minya, Egypt 1913–Cairo, Egypt 1966)

La Part du Sable (The Sand’s Share) Cairo, 1947

Journal

Published in only two issues, this journal included texts

by authors affiliated with Surrealism in both Egypt and
abroad. It began through the efforts of Younan and Henein.
The cover of this first issue was made using decalcomania,
a technique in which paint is pressed between two
sheets of paper which are then pulled apart to reveal
unplanned images.

The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

X82913

224
Albert Cossery
(Cairo, Egypt 1913 – Paris, France 2008)
With illustrations by Ramses Younan
(Minya, Egypt 1913 – Cairo, Egypt 1966)

The Men God Forgot

Berkeley, California, US

1944
Book

Cossery’s short stories were a source of inspiration for

fellow members of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté
(Art and Liberty). They focus on Cairo’s working classes and
the rural poor, exploring the contrast between poverty
and wealth. Younan contributed the cover illustration to
this book, whose texts were first published in 1941 in La
Semaine Egyptienne (The Egyptian Week), an Egyptian
French-language literary magazine.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,

Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library Gift
(GS.470 / ND196.S8 G35 1048)
X82918

225
Long Live Degenerate Art
Translated extract in English

We find absurd, and deserving of total disdain, the religious,

racist and nationalist prejudices that make up the tyranny
of certain individuals who, drunk on their own temporary
omniscience, seek to subjugate the destiny of the work of
art. We refuse to see in these regressive myths anything
but real concentration camps of thought.

Art – as a permanent spiritual and emotional exchange

between all of humanity – can no longer be bound by such
arbitrary limits.

In Vienna, which is in the hands of the barbarians, canvases

by Renoir are lacerated and Freud’s works are burned in
public squares. The most brilliant triumph of great German
artists such as Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Kokoschka, George
Grosz, Kandinsky and Karl Hofer (winner of the 1938
Carnegie Prize) are blacklisted and must cede to the inept
platitudes of national-socialist art.

In Rome, a so-called ‘literary improvement’ commission has

just completed its unsavoury task, concluding that ‘anything
that is anti-Italian, anti-racist, immoral or depressive’ must
be removed from circulation.

226
Intellectuals, writers, artists! Let us take on the challenge
together. We are totally united with this degenerate art. It
represents any chance we have of a future. Let us work for
its victory over the new Middle Age that is rising up in the
very midst of the West.

Translation in English from Sam Bardaouil, Surrealism in

Egypt, Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group, 2017
X82316

227
Clé (Key) no. 2, Paris, February 1939
With cover by André Masson

1939
Journal

Clé was published by the Fédération internationale de l’art

révolutionnaire indépendant or International Federation of
Independent Revolutionary Art (known as FIARI), formed by
André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky in 1938. The
aim was to establish a network in opposition to the rising
fascism of Europe and the Stalinism of the Soviet Union.
This issue hails the founding of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art
et Liberté (Art and Liberty) and its ‘affirmation of cultural
and artistic freedoms’.

Tate Archive, John Lyle single item. Purchased, 2016

TGA 20161/4
Z76166

228
IVe Exposition de l’art indépendant (Fourth Exhibition of
Independent Art), Cairo, 12-22 May 1944

1944
Exhibition Catalogue

al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty)

Cover by Eric de Némès

La Séance continue (The Séance Continues), Cairo, 1945

1945
Book

Tate Archive, Ithell Colquhoun Papers: TGA 929/10/3/17

Z76230

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library

copy: Gift of Friends of the Thomas J. Watson Library
(N7381.75.S97 S43 1940)
X82919

229
ROOM 11

230
Clockwise from room entrance

Wall text

The Surrealist revolution had this incalculable advantage

of bringing the irrational into everyday life and of having
made known to men the treasures of the unconscious...
Poetry thus has an end. The absolute liberation of man.

Malcolm de Chazal, 1960

231
Roberto Matta
(Santiago de Chile, Chile 1911 – Civitavecchia, Italy 2002)

La Vertu noire
Black Virtue

1943
Oil paint on canvas

The structure of Matta’s painting combines opposing and

contradictory elements across its three parts. He saw the
practice of automatism as a means to imagine an inner
world, calling his works ‘inscapes’. After moving from
Chile to Paris to study, Matta enthusiastically embraced
Surrealism in 1937, and formed an important connection to
artists in New York after arriving there in 1939.

Tate, Purchased 1970

T01232

232
Ramses Younan
(Minya, Egypt 1913 – Cairo, Egypt 1966)

Inspiration de la Mer
Inspiration from the Sea

1963
Oil paint on canvas

Purchased with funds provided by the Middle East North

Africa Acquisitions Committee 2017
T14881

A core member of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art

and Liberty) in the late 1930s and 1940s, Younan believed
in the revolutionary power of the imagination. In this late
work, Younan turned to techniques close to Surrealist
automatism. Here, the forms seem to dissolve and merge
into each other. Starting from an initial improvisation
he developed and refined the surface of the painting to
produce complex abstract composition.

233
Asger Jorn
(Vejrum, Denmark 1914– Århus, Denmark 1973)

Untitled

1937
Oil paint on cardboard, glued to canvas

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg

X79733

Jorn experimented with a variety of automatic techniques,

such as scraping a thick paint surface to excavate earlier
layers, as seen here. He engaged with Surrealism after
the 1935 Kubisme-Surrealisme exhibition organised in
Copenhagen by fellow artist Vilhelm Bjerke Pedersen. Two
years later he associated with Linien (The Line), a group of
abstract Danish Surrealists. Though he did not identify as
a Surrealist, Jorn wrote of automatism in his 1949 Discours
aux pingouins (Address to the Penguins), calling it a
simultaneously psychic and physical act.

234
Yayoi Kusama
(born Matsumoto, Japan 1929)

A Circus Rider’s Dream

1955
Gouache on paper

Kusama has sustained an independent artistic practice that

defies definition by style or medium. She was not officially
associated with Surrealism. Early works like A Circus
Rider’s Dream, however, suggest an engagement with the
movement with its abstract, colourful forms that seem
to metamorphose as they move across the paper. It was
created at a time when she was in contact with Takiguchi
Shūzō, a major supporter of Surrealism in Japan. Kusama’s
free handling of gouache paint challenged traditional forms
of brushwork.

Private Collection
X80953

235
Wall text

AUTOMATISM

Surrealist automatism represents – much like the

harnessing of dreams – a way to free the mind and
challenge the rationalism of the modern world. Unconscious
creation, like doodling, has been a catalyst for an array of
artists working in related processes of improvisation. For
example, a dynamic group of poets and artists in 1940s
Aleppo embraced automatic techniques. As poet Urkhan
Muyassar explained, they sought to free the ‘mysterious
moments’ of human creativity from a ‘superimposed’
reasoning in order to reach repressed thoughts, or ‘what
lies behind reality’.

Automatism has generated many inventive practices

beyond line drawing. These range from Asger Jorn’s use
of painters’ tools to scratch away the surface of a work to
Oscar Domínguez’s surprise compositions made through
decalcomania, a technique in which two painted surfaces
are pressed together and then pulled apart. As seen in the
works shown here, automatism can capture the unguarded
process of thought, bypassing the selectiveness and control
of the conscious mind.

236
Jean Degottex
(Sathonay-Camp, France 1918 – Paris, France 1988)

L’espace dérobé
Hidden Space

1955
Oil paint on canvas

Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de Création

Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, purchased by the state
in 1980 (AM 2009-387)
X79340

In L’Espace dérobé, Degottex was interested in the

momentum of the creative gesture and the activation of
the surface of the canvas by the parallel lines. He was not
a member of the Paris Surrealists, but his painting was
championed by poet André Breton, who organised an
exhibition of the artist’s work in his gallery the year this
work was completed. Breton saw in Degottex’s work a
vital post-war engagement with automatism. Excited by
the secret space hidden from consciousness and evading
conformism, Breton wrote that the canvas ‘swells and
breathes in a trance state where the combined movements
of the wrist and shoulder are deeper than the deepest calls
of the heart.’

237
Françoise Sullivan
(born Montreal, Canada 1923)

Danse dans la neige

(Dance in the Snow)
Documented by Maurice Perron (Montreal, 1924 – Saint-
Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec 1999) and published as the
album Danse dans la neige (Montreal: S.l. Images Ouareau),
1948/1977

1948, printed 1977

Offset prints

Collection of the artist

X82345, X82346, X82347, X79689

In 1948, Sullivan conceived and performed this series

of improvised gestures and movements. Accompanied
by fellow artists Jean-Paul Riopelle and Maurice Perron,
she danced to a score of snow crunching under her feet.
Perron’s photographs are the only record of this Surrealist
performance. A visual artist and modern dancer, Sullivan
played an important role in Montreal’s Les Automatistes
(active 1941–53), an artistic group committed to free
association and automatic methods.

238
Unica Zürn
(Berlin, Germany 1916 – Paris, France 1970)

Untitled

1966
Ink and gouache on paper

Zürn employed automatic techniques for her 1954 book

of drawings and anagrams Hexentexte (Witches’ Texts).
The energetic webs of her automatic drawings suggest
half-disclosed figures. ‘After the first, hesitant ‘floating’
of the pen over the white paper,’ she wrote, ‘one image
effortlessly attaches itself to the other.’ She sustained a
creative partnership with Bellmer and participated in the
1959 Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme (EROS),
dedicated to the theme of eroticism.

Ubu Gallery, New York

X79866

239
César Moro
(Lima, Peru 1903 – Lima, Peru 1956)

Untitled

1927
Mixed media on paper

While known primarily as a writer and poet, Moro left

Lima in 1925 to become a painter. This early collage-
drawing shows his contribution to the Surrealist scene in
Paris. Moro’s line escapes the scientific precision of the
medical diagram to conjure a free-flowing figure. Through
Surrealism, he broke with the religious, political, and sexual
conventions of his middle-class Peruvian upbringing. He
carried this liberation across the Atlantic, organising a
Surrealist exhibition in Lima in 1935 and another in Mexico
City in 1940.

The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

X79997

240
Jean Arp
(Strasbourg, France 1886 – Basel, Switzerland 1966)

Untitled

1940
Collage and gouache on paper

Collection of Gale and Ira Drukier

X79468

Oscar Domínguez
(San Crisobal de La Laguna, Tenerife 1906 –
Paris, France 1957)

Decalcomania

1936
Oil paint on photographic paper

Courtesy The Mayor Gallery, London

X81420

241
André Masson
(Balagny-sur-Thérain, France 1896–Paris, France 1987)

Délire végétal
Vegetal Delirium

1926
Ink on paper

Diego Masson (Comité André Masson)

X79952

Lajos Vajda
(Zalaegerszeg, Austria-Hungary [present-day Hungary] 1908
– Budakeszi, Hungary 1941)

Utak
Roads

1940
Charcoal on paper

Salgo Trust for Education, NY

X80816

242
Paul Păun
(Bucharest, Romania 1915 – Haifa, Israel 1994)

Le Nuage
The Cloud

1943
Ink on paper

Estate of Paul Paun/Paon

X80899

243
Judit Reigl
(Kapuvár, Hungary 1923 – Marcoussis, France 2020)

Untitled

1954
Ink on paper

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

Gift of Maurice Goreli, 2015 (2015.486.6). X80261

These drawings reveal a range of possibilities opened up by

Surrealist automatism. Vajda learned of Surrealism during
his four years in Paris and saw works such as Utak as creative
outlets amid the restrictions of wartime Hungary.

Păun and fellow Bucharest Surrealists Gherasim Luca and

Dolfi Trost led an equally precarious existence in nationalist
Romania during the Second World War. Forced underground,
they named their group Infra-Noir (Infra-Black), as if to show
that their activities existed below the surface of the everyday.

Reigl escaped communist Hungary in 1950, reaching

Paris mostly by walking but with the constant threat of
deportation hanging over her. She similarly pursued
Surrealist release in the rhythm and action of inky marks
on paper.

244
Arshile Gorky
(Khorkom, Ottoman Empire [present-day Turkey] 1904 –
Sherman, Connecticut, US 1948)

Waterfall

1943
Oil paint on canvas

Gorky painted Waterfall in 1943 as a response to the

landscape of Connecticut. The experience encouraged a
new fluidity and freedom, as he diluted and poured paint
down his canvas. This expression of liberation, existing on
the threshold of automatism, was closely associated with
his engagement with Surrealism. Such works fuelled Gorky’s
friendship with the poet André Breton, who identified in
them a ‘real feeling of liberty; the essence of Surrealism’.

Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate

Gallery 1971
T01319

245
Pierre Alechinsky
(born Brussels, Belgium 1927)

Central Park

1965
Acrylic paint on canvas surrounded by ink drawings and
notations on paper

Private Collection – Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co

X80955

Alechinsky participated in Surrealism while a member of

the expressive avant-garde CoBrA group. He made the
central portion of this work during a stay in New York,
where he observed from a high-rise ‘the debonair face of
a monster’ in the ‘meandering paths, rocks, and lawns of
Central Park in the spring.’ Back in his studio in Belgium,
he continued to visualise the scene in a number of small
calligraphic ink images that function as a frame, activating
and transforming the central image. Alechinsky showed
Central Park in the XIe Exposition internationale du
surréalisme of 1965.

246
Wolfgang Paalen
(Vienna, Austria 1905 – Taxco, Mexico 1959)

Le Messager
The Messenger

1941
Oil paint on canvas

Bequeathed by Mrs Jacqueline Marie Onslow-Ford 1979

T02392

Paalen’s visionary paintings emerged from his interest in

the fourth dimension, a philosophical concept which he
studied through the work of Russian mystic P.D. Ouspensky.
The artist aimed to represent this metaphysical plane
through automatism, here using wavelike forms to depict
a cosmic being. With the artists Alice Rahon and Eva
Sulzer, Paalen left Europe in 1939, eventually settling
in the San Angel neighbourhood of Mexico City. Paalen
promoted Surrealism in Mexico, co-organised the 1940
Exposición internacional del surrealismo and launching the
journal Dyn.

247
Agustín Cárdenas
(Matanzas, Cuba 1927 – Havana, Cuba 2001)

Jucambe

1958
Wood, paint and metal

Private Collection c/o Di Donna Galleries, New York

X80956

Cárdenas’s sculptures such as Jucambe, created through

direct carving, draw on the visual traditions of West African
arts as well as the imagery of the Afro-Cuban religion
Santería. He moved from Cuba to France in 1955 and, at the
invitation of André Breton, joined the Surrealist group in
Paris. His encounter with West African culture through Pan-
Africanist circles there transformed his visual language and
provided inspiration for dynamic, totemic sculptures that
fall between abstraction and figuration. ‘In Paris,’ he said,
‘I discovered what a man is, what African culture is.’

248
Kurt Seligmann
(Basel, Switzerland 1900 – Sugar Loaf, New York, US 1962)

Composition surréaliste
Surrealist Composition

1956
Acrylic paint on canvas

Courtesy The Mayor Gallery, London / Timothy Baum,

New York
X82412

Surrealism’s rejection of the rational led some artists to

embrace the occult and magic. In 1937 Seligmann joined
the Paris Surrealists, exhibiting his mysterious paintings
with them in 1938 and in exhibitions in Amsterdam and
in Mexico. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he
moved to New York. Transformed by contact with new
cultures and places, Seligmann became an acknowledged
expert on magic and infused his paintings with mythology
and esotericism. He also hosted Surrealist rituals and wrote
several important books on the occult.

249
Kitawaki Noboru
(Nagoya, Japan 1901 – Kyoto, Japan 1951)

Shūeki kairi zu (kenkon)

Diagram of I Ching Divination (Heaven and Earth)

1941
Oil paint on canvas

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

X79665

Turning to Surrealism in 1937, Kitawaki employed

the technique of mitate (choice) in his earliest works,
juxtaposing unrelated objects in the same pictorial space.
For this painting, made in the 1940s, Kitawaki drew from
a range of sources, bringing together seemingly random
objects and references from geometry, colour theory, and
the Chinese divination philosophy of the I Ching. Kitawaki’s
complex diagrammatic language provided a rational refuge
from the chaos of wartime Japan.

250
Frederick Kiesler
(Vienna, Austria 1890 – New York, US 1965)

Totem for All Religions

1947
Wood and rope

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and

Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, 1971
X79344

Kiesler’s Totem for All Religions is a monumental assembly

of religious and astrological symbols. Best known for
his innovative exhibition designs, Kiesler participated
in the 1947 Exposition internationale du surréalisme in
Paris, organized by poet André Breton and artist Marcel
Duchamp. He travelled from New York to arrange the
gallery’s Salle de Superstition (Room of Superstition), one
of many provocative spaces related to the themes of myth
and magic within the exhibition. Kiesler draped the egg-
shaped room in green cloth, creating an environment for
the presentation of numerous works, including this one.

251
Gordon Onslow-Ford
(Wendover, UK 1912 – Inverness, California, US 2003)

A Present for the Past

1942
Oil paint on canvas

Bequeathed by Mrs Jacqueline Marie Onslow-Ford 1979

T02391

Onslow-Ford sought to express ‘what went on beyond

dreams in the psyche’ in this painting. He did not have a
plan for the work, instead recalling that ‘Each part was
an invention that did not become clear until it was down
on the canvas.’ He developed the painting through an
accumulation of automatic drawings. ‘I had the impression,’
Onslow-Ford explained, ‘that, in venturing into the inner
worlds, nothing was lost. All was there, but seen in a new
way, a merging and interlacing of sky, mountains, plants
and creatures.’ A Present for the Past was painted in his
studio at Erongarícuaro, outside Mexico City and shared
with the writer Jacqueline Johnson. The two were closely
involved with the Surrealist circle around the journal Dyn.

252
Yüksel Arslan
(Istanbul, Turkey 1933 – Paris, France 2017)

Phallisme 8

1958
Natural pigments and graphite on paper

Muse national d’art moderne / Centre de Création

Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, gift (AM 2021-482)
X80958

Arslan developed a personal style that engaged with

Surrealist ideas of free expression while simultaneously
resisting the movement. At his solo exhibition in Istanbul in
1958, he showed a series exploring his theory of ‘phallism,’
derived from his reading of sexual accounts by Sigmund
Freud, the Comte de Lautréamont, and the Marquis de
Sade, among others. The works attracted the attention of
the writers Edouard Roditi and André Breton, who asked
Arslan to exhibit in the 1959 Exposition inteRnatiOnale
du Surréalisme (EROS) in Paris, dedicated to the theme
of eroticism. While his work was ultimately not included,
Arslan moved to that city in 1961.

253
Carlos Mérida
(Guatemala City, Guatemala 1891 – Mexico City,
Mexico 1984)

Estampas del Popol-Vuh (Prints of the Popol Vuh)

1943
Colour lithographs

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Jean

Charlot, 1944 (44.69(1)). X84145, X84147, X84149, X84152,
X84157, X84158, X84163, X84184, X84187, X84188

This print portfolio explores the creation myth of the Popol-

Vuh, a sacred Mayan text that describes the origins of the
K’iche peoples. Mérida, who was born in Guatemala and
with Mayan-K’iche heritage, described these forms as ‘free
poetic versions of mythological wonders.’ Mérida actively
promoted Surrealism in Mexico after returning from Paris
in 1929. A member of the group Los Contemporáneos (The
Contemporaries), he opposed the large-scale narratives of
Mexican, government-commissioned muralism by fusing
elements of European modernism with historical and
Indigenous subjects from the Americas.

254
Wall text

ALTERNATIVE ORDERS

While exploring dreams and summoning the unconscious

to upset the status quo, Surrealism has also depended
on forms of knowledge, patterns of belief, and ways
of life outside urbanised modernity. These ‘alternative
orders’, located through the research and practice of each
individual artist, have the power to challenge established
systems and spark the potential for acts of liberation.

Surrealist enquiry has benefitted from retrieving or

uncovering the past, sometimes merging several unrelated
traditions or positioning itself between them. For example,
Kitawaki Noboru drew upon both the Taoist (ancient
Chinese religion and philosophy) book of the I Ching, and
German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s book on
the theory of colour. For some, like Kurt Seligmann, the
search has extended to magic and alchemy. While Yüksel
Arslan focused on the complete dismissal of existing
forms as a way to produce his own work through a
unique combination of materials. Through the power
of fragmentation and juxtaposition, artists drawn to
Surrealism across different places and times, have found
ways to operate in new multidimensional spaces between
cultures and eras.

255
Leonora Carrington
(Clayton Green, UK 1917 – Mexico City, Mexico 2011)

Self Portrait

1937–38
Oil paint on canvas

Carrington’s Self-Portrait draws on her interests in alchemy,

the tarot (fortune telling) and Celtic folklore. Here she is
sitting with a rocking horse and a hyena, while the horse
galloping outside represents the Celtic goddess of fertility
and freedom. This self-portrait also reflects her response to
gender stereotypes. Looking back, Carrington commented
about her role in Surrealism, ‘I didn’t have time to be
anyone’s muse.’ She painted the work in Paris, following
her introduction to Surrealism at the 1936 International
Surrealist Exhibition in London.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pierre and

Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002 (2002.456.1).
X80246

256
Leonor Fini
(Buenos Aires, Argentina 1908 – Paris, France 1996)

Petit Sphinx hermite

Little Hermit Sphinx

1948
Oil paint on canvas

Presented by Tate Members 2011

T13589

The scene in this painting is an unsettling one. It shows

the open doorway of an overgrown building, with peeling
paintwork. Hanging from the doorway is an internal organ
– identified by Fini as a human lung. Sitting among leaves
is the Sphinx (a mythological hybrid of a lion and woman).
The sphinx was, for Fini, a means of self-identification. She
associated with the feminist occult tradition linked to an
originary and powerful Great Goddess, and the sphinx
was a means to convey this female empowerment. She
challenged convention and patriarchal domination within
society. While she was close to the Surrealist artists Max
Ernst, Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dalí in the 1930s,
Fini’s rejection of the movement’s orthodoxies reinforced
her independence.

257