You have until September 25th, 2005 to catch the Surrealism USA exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, located in downtown Phoenix at McDowell Road and Central Avenue.
Organized by the National Academy Museum in New York, the exhibition houses some of the most well known artists in Surrealism from 1930 to 1950. Containing over eighty paintings, drawings, and sculptures, the exhibition is carrying the work of many famous European artists, such as Salvador Dali and Yves Tanguy, as well as Max Ernst who lived in Arizona from 1946 until 1953.
Other artists included in the exhibition include Arshile Gorky, Joseph Cornell, Isamu Noguchi, Frida Kahlo, David Smith, and Jackson Pollack, as well as Alexander Calder, Dorothea Tanning, Mark Rothko and many others.
The companion exhibition to Surrealism USA, Dream On: Surrealism and Beyond from the Phoenix Art Museum Collection will be available until October 23, 2005 and exhibits work by Joan Miro, Eugene Berman, Philip Curtis, Jean Cocteau and Andre Masson.
The New York Times has called the exhibition an "informative, high-spirited and humbling....a vigorously illuminating show."
What is Surrealism?
Founded in 1924 by Andre Breton, a French doctor and poet who fought in the first World War, Surrealism is a 20th century art and literary movement which attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
The Surrealist movement grew from the earlier Dada movement, which ridiculed contemporary culture and conventional art. Dadaists produced work of "anti-art" and anti-military writings and had a strong anti-aesthetic attitude. Many Dadaists later ventured over to Surrealism, tired of the constant negative, and sometimes radical, approach of the Dada movement.
Major Surrealist painters were Jean (Hans) Arp, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Pierre Roy.
Surrealism provided an alternative to the more conventional and contemporary, formalistic Cubist movement of the time.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
Very nice review -- love the photos!