Exhibition

Homage to Surrealism: 1924 – Forever (All Media)

9 Oct-22 Nov 2024

The Mayor Gallery

London SW1Y 6AB

Overview

The Mayor Gallery, in admirative acknowledgement of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Surrealism (and the Surrealist Movement), will present a comprehensive exhibition entitled Homage to Surrealism: 1924 – Forever (All Media). This exhibition will put on display works covering almost every aspect of Surrealist creativity and adventure, culled from the combined worlds of art, writing (poetry and prose, political and cultural manifestoes, etc.), and ephemeral material of every sort.

Included will be artworks, again in every medium: paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, objects, photographs, by a very wide variety of artists - famous names like Dali, Magritte, Ernst, Miró, Matta, Brauner, de Chirico, Duchamp, Man Ray, Lam. Leonora Carrington, mingle with many others of equally notable imagination and talent as: Eileen Agar, Roland Penrose, Georges Hugnet (inventor of the illustrated word collage), Oscar Dominguez, Marcel Jean, as well as wonderful collages and photo-montages by the great leaders of the movement itself: André Breton and the especially innovative Paul Eluard, as well as Eluard’s beloved wife, the very talented Nusch.

Aside from this vast array of very pertinent artworks, there will also be on display an equally wide array of ephemeral material: the main art and literary reviews (beginning with the original, pioneer one, La Revolution Surrealiste (which inaugurated the movement in the autumn of 1924), the London Bulletin - of the 1930s, when Surrealism was celebrated in London with the first International Surrealist Exhibition, in June of 1936 - VVV and View Magazine from New York - during the years of the Second World War - and various post-war publications like NEON, La Brèche, etc.). There will also be presented a full selection of original editions of many of the seminal books by Surrealist poets and renderers of prose, alike: André Breton’s Nadja and L’Amour fou, René Crevel’s Mr. Knife Miss Fork (with illustrations by Max Ernst), Benjamin Peret’s La Brebis galante” (also with a series of memorable illustrations by Max Ernst), Georges Hugnet’s La Septième face du de (with a beautifully designed cover by Marcel Duchamp).

All in all, we hope that this exhibition, besides paying full respects to the very undeniably great importance of Surrealism, will bring very full enjoyment to everybody, from old-time connoisseurs and scholars to interested students and newcomers, alike- Timothy Baum (Co-curator)