Madrid,
Guillaume Apollinaire coined his name in 1917 to baptize an art whose searches were beyond the real and Breton gave nature letter to the term when formulating the Manifesto of surrealism In 1924, with a second part six years later. In 2024, a century of the birth of this movement was commemorated, brief in its development by its canonical figures, but much more prolonged in its influence if we open the gaze beyond France and the twenties; The exhibition with which the Mapfre Foundation adds to that event, curated by Diego’s star, can be visited from today and examines precisely the reception of Bretonian postulates in other geographies and by less celebrated authors, emphasizing surrealist immersion of women artists (there are thirty -five represented).
Breton realized, in that text probably conceived as a prologue of his book Soluble fishof the general purposes of this current, born not coincidentally after the cruel impact of World War I: translate into images and words the way in which thought works, using the psychic automatism; Free yourself from both ethical and aesthetic bonds and give space to sleep and natural terrain in which the unconscious campaigns. The cradle of this new way of looking (more inwards than out) is known that it was Paris, the center of the avant -garde art still in the interwar period, but the directions taken by the authors who followed their steps in Spain, Belgium, Brazil or Argentina and those women not taken into consideration by the group forged around Breton -then dissolved between discussions. Whitney Chadwick would provide in 1985 an essay to those surrealists whom he mentioned in his manifesto as beautiful namelessgranting them a role, more metaphorical than real, of mediums, of guides for an unconscious to which, theoretically, they would have greater closeness. The authors who also approached the surreal from beyond France would take a few decades to be recognized.
“1924. Other surrealism ”, which has been titled this exhibition to emphasize that this avant -garde had other paths beyond the canonical, it has two hundred pieces when studying the particular cases of Latin America, Spain or Belgium (in the latter country Breton’s statements were discussed first and the movement for his most intriguing roads was conducted, as proved by Paul Nougé’s photographs); Without neglecting the contributions of fundamental figures – Magritte, Max Ernst, Dalí, Delvaux or Tanguy – contributions of less known and furthest authors of the official group are reviewed, among which the commissioner wanted to highlight, in the presentation of this project, To Esteban French, born in 1913 in the very artistic town of Portbou, already Maruja Mallo, whose claim is relatively recent.
The first section, Surrealisms with Breton away and with Breton nearbyremember that beyond his cohesive and pioneer role of the movement, the writer played strict control over his first creators; However, although his influence was fundamental in France, in other scenarios it was diluted: Gala and Dalí voluntarily moved away from him for their disagreements, the Belgian surrealists wanted to maintain their independence and bet on the object built in front of the one found; And in Argentine surrealism the Gallic ascendant was conjugated with the Spanish, playing an important role in its dissemination of the Raquel Forner library.
Breton did not remain, in any case, oblivious to that expansion, he was more or less linked to his ideas: these were disseminated in Buenos Aires through the magazine Minotaurehe went to the inauguration of the Surrealist exhibition of Tenerife in 1935 and, in 1938, he traveled to Mexico, a country that he considered a born surreal due to his folklore, the basis of many compositions of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The latter, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo, were among his direct faithful and we also know that in Martinica, where he went after the German occupation of France, he was interested in the work of Héctor Hyppolite, a self -taught painter whose creations had to do with practice of voodoo.
Sleep and desire focus a second section of the sample, irremediably linked to encounters as unexpected as extraordinary, generators of very particular logics (inside and outside the exquisite corpses), and the drifts of the automatism: of granting all possible freedom to thought to thought , as much as it allows a conscience that should be, allegedly, on one side in favor of chance. In the landscapes of these authors, no matter how much they move away from figuration, they fit the ghostly and dreams: the viewer cannot, in any way, enter their spaces, which are only apparent and populated by fragmented anatomies that inhabit scenographies No concrete referents.
In this section we will find works by Remedios Varo, which was not interested in Breton’s theories but in automatism, and diverse scenes in which the temporal and spatial dimensions are disrupted, as happened in that primal description of Breton, in 1924, From a man cut in two through a window that, despite that fragmentation, still walked. It is parallel times that generates the unconscious, capable of turning dreams and objects of love into nightmares (FOU) dolls or mannequins. Against the cryptic and only male conception of that feeling, Toyen, a Czech painter who camouflaged her female identity under an ambiguous name, and that appealed to the freedom of desire was used.
Other surreal authors, as we pointed out, maintained closer links with magic, telepathy or village: Gala threw letters and both Leonora Carrington -recreationally in this foundation -as Remedios Varo, they were very interested in clairvoyance.
The third and last chapter of the exhibition, The castle of the surrealists as a memory of the lost paradiseit begins referring to the surreal search of the philosopher’s stone, that substance that could transform into gold the most humble materials and would allow those who access it to reach a higher state of consciousness or, as Breton himself would say, than The imagination of man is overwhelmingly vain. The stones in the compositions of the artists of surrealism became allegories of that search for interior lighting: nature could be a vehicle of transformation, as Mallo suggested and pointed out the clouds of Dalí and Galá, the stars of Miró -we can see their Dog barking to the moon-, the planets of Rufino Tamayo or the ancestral caves of Alice Rahon.
For the Galician author, cities and forests were two faces not so far from the same currency, a lost paradise (before the door that the shadows of the trees hide, there are cars that wait, Breton said). Surrealist urbanisms used to reflect the world that was contemporary to them, but incorporated diverse echoes: Poe’s threats, those of the verbena lights, the darkness of the Nadja of the French, Paris or the city as a surreal object in Walter Benjamin.
There were many doors that surrealism opened to other dimensions and this sample shows that its analysis, or from afar, has ended.
“1924. Other surrealisms “
Mapfre Foundation. Recoletos room
Recoletos Paseo, 23
Madrid
From February 6 to May 11, 2025
