artists who from the mid-1920s were providing a demonstration of Surrealism in the visual arts, and establishing its place within them.
Aside from the growing activity of the artists in Paris, Surrealist art was now in evidence beyond France’s borders. In 1931, the first important Surrealism exhibition was held in the United States, with works shown by Dalí, de Chirico, Ernst, Masson, Picasso, Miró and others. Personal exhibitions of the Surrealists came to various American cities. Additionally, in 1933 a Surrealist exhibition was held in Teneriffe. By the end of the 1930s, exhibitions of the Surrealists had covered the whole of Europe, reaching Belgium and Holland, Zürich, Copenhagen, Prague and London. Japan and Latin America also received their fair share of Surrealism. In the 1940s, the activities of the Surrealists continued primarily in America where many of them had gone to escape the Second World War. During the war, a large exhibition of Surrealist art was held in London. In 1945, a collection of Breton’s writings on painting came out in the United States, entitled Surrealism and Painting. In June 1947, the International Exhibition of Surrealism was held in Paris at the Galerie Maeght. It could truly be said that the visual art of Surrealism had conquered the whole world. The fame of its artists, and the huge interest in its painting was far greater than the public profile of Surrealism in literature, although this was where the movement had started. A moment in the history of art had probably come when art needed an influx of new forces. If the visual language of painting at the beginning of the twentieth century had been the focus of concern of Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism, of Matisse, Picasso and Kandinsky, then the nihilism of Dada, in combination with the philosophy and literature of the Surrealists, at once created the conditions which enabled art’s internal vacuum to be filled. And, as will always be the case, Surrealist painting did not spring up out of a desert. The history of European art is remarkable for such a wealth of treasures that here and there the future Surrealists were able to find the first shoots of what would later, with careful nurturing, function to make up the special language of their art. If the first road to Surrealism traversed through Dada, then the second road lay through that existing tradition in art which had constituted a manifestation of Surrealism long before the movement was officially christened in the twentieth century.
Toyen (Marie Cermínová), At the Chateau Lacoste, 1946.
Private Collection.
Yves Tanguy, The Inspiration, 1929.
Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 97 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes.
Salvador Dalí, The Enigma of Hitler, 1939.
Oil on canvas, 51.2 × 79.3 cm.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
The Surrealists before Surrealism
The artist Hieronymus Bosch was born in the mid-fifteenth century in a tiny Dutch town not far from the German border. His name was derived from the name of his native town, Hertogenbosch, known in French as Bois-le-Duc. He died in 1615, leaving behind a legacy in painting which already struck Giorio Vasari in the sixteenth century as “fantastiche e capriciose”. Choosing not to compete on the same ground as his great contemporary Jan van Eyck, Bosch astonished people with the unbridled fantasy of the world he had created. The Italian Lomazzo, author of the Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, wrote in Bosch’s lifetime: “The Fleming Girolamo Bosch, who in depicting strange appearances, and frightening and horrible dreams, was unique and truly divine.”[62] In the sixteenth century he had already acquired a reputation as “the creator of devils”. At that time, medieval monsters and fantastic images whose purpose was to strike fear into the heart of man and to curb his pride were still customary, and their symbolism could be well understood. However, the pictures of this Dutchman made a deeper impression than the monsters on the capitals of Romanesque churches or in the miniatures of Gothic manuscripts.
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