Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 @ PMA - Philadelphia Museum of Art - A major exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Surrealist movement

Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100

Philadelphia Museum of Art

November 8, 2025 – February 16, 2026

Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, born Greece, 1888–1978) 

The Soothsayer's Recompense, 1913 

Oil on canvas, 53 3/8 × 70 7/8 inches (135.6 × 180 cm) 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-38

André Masson (French, 1896–1987)

The Landscape of Wonders, 1935 

Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 × 25 3/4 inches (76.5 × 65.4 cm) 

Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 

Bequest, Richard S. Zeisler, 2007, 2007.44

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989) 

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, 

(Premonition of Civil War), 1936 

Oil on canvas, 39 5/16 x 39 3/8 inches (99.9 x 100 cm) 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-41

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989) 

Aphrodisiac Telephone, 1938 

Plastic and metal, 

8 1/4 × 12 1/4 × 6 1/2 inches (21 × 31.1 × 16.5 cm) 

Lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 

The William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 96.2 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) presents Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, a major exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Surrealist movement. As the final stop in an ambitious  tour organized with the Centre Pompidou in Paris—and the sole venue in the United States—the PMA will tell the story of Surrealist art, spotlighting the makers who sought out new expressive forms to expand the reach of the creative imagination.

The five touring partners are: the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Brussels), the Fundación MAPFRE (Madrid), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), and the PMA. Each  venue was tasked with presenting a distinct story of Surrealism relevant to their own histories and collections. At the PMA, Dreamworld will provide a chronological installation arranged through six thematic sections, including one, unique to Philadelphia, that focuses on artists who fled from Europe to Mexico and the U.S. during World War II.

In his 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, poet and artist André Breton addressed what he saw as a crisis of consciousness: at around twenty years of age, he said, humans discard their childlike imaginations to adopt adult sense, decorum, and judgement. Breton believed that the only legitimate aspiration is to obtain a state of freedom, achievable solely by reharnessing the imagination. Surrealism, the movement in literature and art that Breton codified with his manifesto, would continually seek new techniques for exploring the human capacity for astonishment.

The first self-described Surrealists working in Paris rejected the representation of objective reality in art as antithetical to a truer, higher beauty, and instead, sought to produce images with a dreamlike character. The first section of this exhibition, “Waking Dream,” traces the development of Surrealist imagery and experimental techniques across mediums in the 1920s, from the found-object constructions of Man Ray and the collages of Max Ernst to hallucinatory canvases by Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, and Salvador Dalí.

Jean (Hans) Arp (French, born Germany [Alsace], 1886–1966) 

Growth, modeled 1938; cast by 1949 

Bronze, 31 1/4 × 12 1/2 × 7 3/8 inches (79.4 × 31.8 × 18.7 cm) 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

Gift of Curt Valentin, 1950, 1950-78-1

Roberto Matta (Chilean, 1911–2002) 

Morphology (Fantasy Landscape), c. 1939 

Oil on canvas, 12 × 16 1/8 inches (30.5 × 41 cm)

Collection of Andrew S. Teufel

Dorothea Tanning (American, 1910–2012) 

Birthday, 1942 

Oil on canvas, 40 1/4 × 25 1/2 inches (102.2 × 64.8 cm)

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 125th Anniversary Acquisition. 

Purchased with funds contributed 

by C. K. Williams, II, 1999, 1999-50-1

Dreamworld will then journey through sections exploring the themes of “Natural History” and “Desire.” Capturing a sense of wonder in nature was crucial for the development of Surrealist sensibility. Visitors will encounter enigmatic landscapes and fantastic creatures; torn-paper collages by Hans Arp will be displayed alongside Paul Klee’s vibrant painting Fish Magic (1925), the disorienting photographic landscapes by Lee Miller, and Joseph Cornell’s boxes containing found objects. Nearby, works by Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, André Kertész, and others will demonstrate the powerful ways in which photography served the Surrealist interest in eros, or desire, and the reinvention of the erotic body.

A through line of the exhibition is the use of mythology to convey the Surrealist world view. A section titled “Premonition of War” features images of monsters and creatures of strange and terrifying shape, which artists such as Dalí, Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso used to respond to the devastating rise of totalitarianism and war in Europe in the 1930s.

With the outbreak of World War II, many Surrealists working in France left for North America, taking refuge in Caribbean ports, Mexico, and the United States. This is the focus of a section unique to the PMA, entitled “Exiles.” This section features treasured paintings in the PMA’s collection in addition to major loans such as Frida Kahlo's My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree) (1936). In New York, Surrealism’s wartime capital, younger artists developed innovative forms of painting in tune with Surrealist methods. Highlights here will include Jackson Pollock’s Male and Female (1942–1943) and Mark Rothko’s Gyrations on Four Planes (1944).

The exhibition’s concluding section, “Magic Art,” focuses on a new type of esotericism that emerged within Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II. Filled with imagery of magical and alchemical beings, celestial figures, and symbols of the occult, this section will feature Leonora Carrington’s The Pleasures of Dagobert (1945), which materializes the magical, metamorphic imaginings of an early-medieval French monarch, and Remedios Varo’s Creation of the Birds (1957), in which an owl-headed painter uses starlight to bring a painted bird to life.

Remedios Varo (Spanish, 1908–1963) 

Icon, 1945

Oil with mother-of-pearl and gold leaf inlays on wood 

Closed: 23 5/8 × 15 7/16 × 2 1/8 inches 

(60 × 39.2 × 5 .4 cm) 

Open: 23 5/8 × 27 9/16 × 2 1/8 inches 

(60 × 70 × 5.4 cm) 

Colección Malba, 

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, 1997.02

Illustrated by Arshile Gorky (American, born Van Province, 

Ottoman Empire [present-day Turkey], c. 1904–1948) 

Text by André Breton (French, 1896–1966), 

Dust jacket and cover designed by Marcel Duchamp 

(American, born France, 1887–1968), 

Cover of Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares, 1946 

Hardbound book with paper cover design by Marcel Duchamp

Book: 9 3/8 x 6 3/8 inches (23.8 x 16.2 cm)

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

Gift of an anonymous donor, 1988, 1988-8-2

Victor Brauner (Romanian, 1903–1966) 

The Lovers (Messengers of the Number), February, 1947 

Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 28 3/4 inches (92 × 73 cm) 

Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris: 

Bequest of Mme Jacqueline Victor Brauner, 1986, AM 1987-1204

Joseph Cornell (American, 1903–1972) 

Untitled (Constellation), c. 1958 

Box construction: wood, metal, cut paper, glass and found objects, 

13 × 19 3/8 × 4 1/4 inches (33 × 49.2 × 10.8 cm) 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

Gift of Josephine Albarelli, 2015, 2015-144-5

“Surrealist art has been a focus of our museum since receiving the generous gifts of the Louise and Walter Arensberg collection in 1950 and the bequest of the Albert E. Gallatin collection in 1952,” said Matthew Affron, the museum’s Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art. “Today, our permanent collection features outstanding works by a range of artists associated with Surrealism, including Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, and Dorothea Tanning. As the main repository of works by Marcel Duchamp, one of Surrealism’s most influential guiding spirits, the PMA is very proud to build on this monumental exhibition and present it to audiences in the U.S.”

“The PMA has an extraordinary collection of modern art, and through this exhibition, we can offer our visitors a new perspective on Surrealism and showcase the strength of our own collection,” said Sasha Suda, the George D. Widener Director and CEO. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to celebrate 100 years of Surrealism.”

In Philadelphia, Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 is curated by Matthew Affron, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, with Danielle Cooke, Exhibition Assistant. It will be accompanied by an illustrated publication by Matthew Affron, detailing the the key motivations, principles, themes, and techniques of Surrealist art from the early 1920s to the late 1950s.

PMA - PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130

philamuseum.org

Related Posts on this blogzine:

Surrealism and Its Legacy in the United States (Essay, June 2025)

Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes

The Hepworth Wakefield, 23 November 2024 – 27 April 2025

Out of this World: Surreal & Fantastic Art in Photography

Keith de Lellis Gallery, New York, October 3 – November 15, 2024

Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism 

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, 4 April - 25 May 2024

Surrealism Beyond Borders

Tate Modern, London, 24 February 2022 – 29 August 2022

Surrealism and the dream

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 8 October 2013 - 12 January 2014

Dali. All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, April 27 - September 2, 2013

Marcel Duchamp on Display: Optics, Exhibition Installations, Portable Museums

Zabriskie Gallery, New York, March 22 - May 5, 2001

Dreaming with Open Eyes

Israel Museum, Jerusalem, December 22, 2000 - June 2001

Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years 

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , January 14 - March 17, 1996 

"Self-Portraits" Exhibition @ Skarstedt Paris

Self-Portraits

Skarstedt Paris

February 13 – March 29, 2025

Skarstedt Paris presents Self-Portraits, an exhibition that delves into the multifaceted nature of self-portraiture, exploring its significance as a means of self-expression throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Whether rendered in traditional or groundbreaking modes, each work on view delves into the paradoxes, nuances, and idiosyncrasies that make each identity unique, thereby connecting the artist’s individual ethos with universal values and themes.

Across the exhibition, the boundaries of self-representation dissolve into bold experimentation, where themes of transformation, temporality, and vulnerability intertwine. Jean Dubuffet’s Self-portrait from 1966, one of the six he ever made, would become the cover image of the Pompidou retrospective in 2001. It is part of the L’Hourloupe series, a cycle that sets a creative protocol between 1962 to 1974, a veritable exploration of a new language that touches on all artistic spheres explored by the French artist. Using sinuous, labyrinthine graphics, Jean Dubuffet composed schematic spaces like constructs of the mind. The surreal and the introspective converge in André Masson’s Le Voyant - Ville Crânienne (1940), a poetic synthesis of ink and gouache that evokes the fractured nature of identity as seen through a surrealist lens. The self emerges as both seer and subject, a fragment of the subconscious shaped by unseen forces. This notion of transformation continues in the conceptual play of Cindy Sherman, whose Untitled Film Still #24 (1978) disrupts the idea of self-portraiture as truth-telling. By embodying various personas through costumes and cinematic framing, Cindy Sherman dissolves herself into archetypes, exposing the performative masks society demands and the fluidity of personal identity. Martin Kippenberger's Untitled (1992), part of his series of Hand Painted Pictures, interrogates the conventions of self-portraiture by embracing irony and subversion, presenting the artist's identity as a fractured, performative construct. Through a deliberate amalgamation of self-deprecation and painterly virtuosity, Martin Kippenberger critiques the commodification of the artist's persona while questioning the authenticity of self-representation itself.

Georg Baselitz, by inverting his figure in Der Anfang ist der Abgang (The Beginning is the Departure) (2017), offers a meditation on the destabilization of the self. His deliberate subversion of form mirrors the psychological disorientation of self-reflection, confronting mortality and the inexorable passage of time. Similarly concerned with the interiority of human experience, Eric Fischl invites viewers into a deeply introspective yet playful meditation on the act of self-representation in Cat ‘n Hat (2024). By positioning himself in a jester’s hat, Eric Fischl underscores the inherent absurdity of the artist’s role—laying oneself bare before an audience through the act of painting. This duality, at once vulnerable and self-aware, reflects the paradox of creation as both an intimate exposure and a performative gesture, where humor becomes a defense against the weight of self-examination.

More than fifty years earlier, Pablo Picasso articulated his anxieties regarding his place within the art historical canon through works such as Buste d’Homme (1964), produced during a prolific period of introspective self-portraits that utilize a pared-down style to express the urgency of his feeling in his later years that he had “less and less time, and…more and more to say.”[1] Similarly, Francis Bacon’s late Study for Self-Portrait (1979) uses intense light and shadow to highlight the creases along his forehead and other visible signs of age, investigating himself as a means of simultaneously investigating the human condition, traumas, and violence. Turning to self-portraiture “because [he] had nobody else left to paint,”[2] this intimately-scaled work questions at what degree of distortion the work can still be a representation of the self. Juan Gris’s Autoportrait (1911-1912), rendered in the language of Cubism, deconstructs and reassembles the figure into facets of geometry. The fractured planes not only speak to the multiplicity of the self but also to the structural interplay between form and meaning in modernist art.

The tactile intensity of Frank Auerbach’s layered compositions further complicates notions of self. His visceral approach to works like Self-Portrait II (2024) transforms the portrait into a locus of memory, each mark carrying the weight of time’s erosion on identity. Similarly, Chantal Joffe’s vibrant palette and bold brushwork in a new painting imbue her portrayals with a raw immediacy and a diaristic quality that captures the precarious balance between strength and fragility, echoing themes of femininity, motherhood, and self-examination. Louis Fratino likewise fills his canvases with a quiet familiarity, using the queer body as a mirror for the vastness of memory and emotional expression. Throughout the 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe also reflected his commitment to themes of gender expression. In Self-Portrait (1980), we find him draped in a luxurious fur coat, exuding an elegance in the style of Rrose Sélavy, Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego, whose playful fluidity of gender and self-reinvention are echoed by Mapplethorpe in a manner that suggests Robert Mapplethorpe’s rejection of traditional binary definitions of gender.

Through the subversive materiality of grease and pigment, David Hammons challenges the very medium of portraiture. His Untitled (circa 1970) resists conventional depictions of identity, offering instead an enigmatic interplay of texture and absence that critiques cultural and societal narratives, particularly as they relate to race in America. In making his body both the image and material of the work, David Hammons literally gives his viewers a reflection of his experience as a Black man in America. These themes continue in Untitled (SAMO) (1981) by Jean-Michel Basquiat. With its economy of means, Jean-Michel Basquiat conveys the reality of his place in American society and the visceral emotions that accompany it. His refusal to depict his true likeness in preference of a mask-like figure gets to the heart of self-portraiture’s role as a personal mode through which to explore identity, culture, and posit one’s own social commentaries. In making himself appear almost as an African mask, his experiences as a man of color in 1980s America act as proxy for the universal experiences of others like him.

Together, these artists reveal the self as a site of tension and transformation—a space where cultural, personal, and artistic identities collide and evolve. The works in Self-Portraits invite viewers to explore the shifting terrain of representation, where each artist unearths the essence of individuality within the universal human experience.

[1] Pablo Picasso quoted in Marie-Laure Bernadac, Late Picasso: Paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints 1953-1972 (London: Tate Publishing, 1988), 85.

[2] Francis Bacon, quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 150.

SKARSTEDT PARIS

2 Avenue Matignon, 75008 Paris

www.skarstedt.com

André Masson @ Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, Issoudun - La Sculpture retrouvée

André Masson, La Sculpture retrouvée

Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, Issoudun

3 juin - 3 septembre 2017

Le musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch d’Issoudun présente une exposition exceptionnelle consacrée à l’un des artistes majeurs du surréalisme, André Masson (1896-1987), trente ans après sa disparition. Peintre et graveur célébré, Masson fut l’un des acteurs historiques du surréalisme de la première heure avec Max Ernst, Jean Arp, Man Ray, Joan Miró, précurseur de l’automatisme en 1923 et assurément l’une des personnalités les plus fortes de ce mouvement. Cette exposition s’attache, avec le soutien du Comité André Masson, à présenter un aspect méconnu de son travail jamais ou très peu montré puisque aucune exposition en France ne fut dédiée à la sculpture depuis 1990. L’exposition du musée réunit à cette occasion 17 bronzes de 1927 à 1986 ainsi qu’une soixantaine de dessins, peintures et gravures provenant essentiellement des collections de la famille de l’artiste. D’autres prêts de collections publiques et privées sont venus enrichir l’exposition dont ceux du Musée d’art moderne de Belfort, de la Galerie Jeanne Bucher-Jaeger et de la Galerie Nathalie Seroussi à Paris, la Galerie Toninelli de Monaco, ainsi que des collectionneurs privés.

Si l’oeuvre sculptée d’André Masson reste finalement assez restreint (moins d’une trentaine d’oeuvres), c’est que l’artiste lui-même se considère davantage comme un peintre et un graveur que comme un sculpteur. Durant les dernières années de sa vie, André Masson reconsidère son oeuvre sculpté. Il se consacre alors sous l’impulsion de la Galerie Due Ci à Rome, chez qui il expose depuis 1980, à la réalisation de fontes en bronze de ses sculptures qu’il a créées depuis 1927. Elles furent présentées pour la première fois sur le stand du galeriste romain lors de la FIAC de 1986 au Grand Palais à Paris, André Masson, la sculpture, à Rome en 1989, pour l’exposition André Masson, l’insurgé du XXème siècle, puis à Cologne en Allemagne et au Musée d’Auxerre en 1990. Depuis ces événements aucune exposition en France ne fut dédiée spécifiquement à son oeuvre sculptée.

MUSÉE DE L'HOSPICE SAINT-ROCH

Rue de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, 36100 Issoudun

museeissoudun.tv

Expo Picasso, Léger, Masson au LaM : Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler et ses peintres

Picasso, Léger, Masson : Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler et ses peintres 

LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut 

Jusqu'au 12 janvier 2014

Depuis sa réouverture, le LaM rend régulièrement hommage aux collectionneurs, galeristes et amateurs d’art qui, en alliant passion et patience, discrétion et générosité, ont fait toute la richesse des collections des musées d’aujourd’hui.

A l’occasion de son trentième anniversaire, le musée retrace dans un parcours exceptionnel l’histoire de la Galerie Louise Leiris. Riche en rebondissements, elle est étroitement liée à la collection d’art moderne du musée: Roger Dutilleul et Jean Masurel lui ont été fidèles pendant plusieurs décennies, y choisissant un ensemble d’œuvres qui témoigne autant de leur goût que d’un dialogue esthétique presque ininterrompu avec le maître des lieux, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.

Celui qui va devenir le marchand des cubistes « héroïques » - Georges Braque et Pablo Picasso - ouvre sa première galerie en 1907. Fernand Léger, Juan Gris et plus tard Henri Laurens rejoignent son « écurie ».

La Première Guerre mondiale contraint Kahnweiler à ouvrir une seconde galerie en 1920, la Galerie Simon, qui accueille une nouvelle génération d’artistes: André Beaudin, Eugène de Kermadec et surtout André Masson, point de contact avec le surréalisme. A cette époque apparaît la figure de Louise Godon, qui assiste Kahnweiler dans la gestion de son établissement. Devenue l’épouse de Michel Leiris en 1926, elle rachète le fonds et donne son nom à la galerie lorsque le marchand est à nouveau contraint de quitter Paris, pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Toujours maître à bord et fidèle à ses artistes, Kahnweiler organise à partir des années 1950 d’innombrables expositions Picasso, dont il a désormais l’exclusivité.

Déployée dans les salles d’art moderne, l’exposition présente aux côtés des chefs-d’œuvre du LaM issus de la Donation Geneviève et Jean Masurel, ceux que Louise et Michel Leiris ont offerts au Musée national d’art moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou en 1984. Assortie de prêts complémentaires provenant de collections publiques, comme le Musée du Quai Branly ou la Donation Maurice Jardot de Belfort, ainsi que d’importantes collections particulières, l’exposition reviendra sur les années héroïques et les heures plus sombres d’une galerie inséparable de l’histoire de l’art moderne. La figure de Michel Leiris, discrète mais présente pendant plusieurs décennies, permettra, en contrepoint, d’explorer certains terrains partagés par le poète, le marchand et leurs artistes : le primitivisme, l’autobiographie ou encore l’écriture dans le Théma Michel Leiris et le livre illustré.

En lien avec l’exposition, l’accrochage de la collection contemporaine des Figures des Visages s’attache quant à lui à cinq des derniers artistes collectionnés par Jean Masurel après- guerre : Bernard Buffet, Eugène Dodeigne, Eugène Leroy, Jean Roulland et Arthur Van Hecke, dont les travaux seront présentés aux côtés d’un choix d’œuvres contemporaines. 

L’exposition est accompagnée d’un catalogue d’environ 160 pages, reproduisant la majorité des œuvres exposées. Une chronologie et une synthèse de l’histoire de la galerie y seront inclus, ainsi que plusieurs articles de spécialistes et universitaires approfondissant les thématiques soulevées (prix de vente : 30 €). 

Commissaire de l'exposition : Jeanne-Bathilde Lacourt, conservatrice en charge de l’art moderne

LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut 

Site internet : www.musee-lam.fr