The Paris institution celebrates the centenary of Surrealism, which began with the publication of André Breton's Manifesto, with a major exhibition featuring 500 works from around the world, including paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents.

Twenty-two years after the exhibition "The Surrealist Revolution", the Centre Pompidou in Paris takes a fresh look at a movement that extends far beyond the still-credited pioneers Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Paul Éluard. Soberly entitled "Surrealism", this 2,200-square-meter retrospective retraces forty-five years of creative effervescence, from 1924 to 1969, broadening the scope of perspectives on a global scale by presenting artists from various countries, both male and female. In 2023, the "Surréalisme au féminin?" exhibition at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris had already done a fine job of rehabilitating the movement, unveiling nearly 50 ingenious, free-spirited and underrated female artists from several countries. A movement that was nonetheless the only one "to count so many women among its active members", as Marie Sarré, co-curator of the exhibition and curator at the Centre Pompidou's modern collections department, points out.

MANIFESTO AND IA

As part of its centenary celebrations, the Centre Pompidou is broadening the spectrum of this artistic and intellectual movement, led by André Breton, which shook up codes, transcended the limits of creative forms, and diversified the media and techniques of expression...
The retrospective, divided into 13 chapters accompanied by an introduction, is designed like a labyrinth, with André Breton's original Manifesto of Surrealism at its center, on exceptional loan from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). A new feature is the reconstruction of Breton's voice by voice cloning, using artificial intelligence. It serves as a guide for visitors to discover and understand this manuscript, which lays the foundations for the real functioning of thought.
Throughout the exhibition, and as Didier Ottinger, co-curator and deputy director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, explains, the plurality of works is based around the "two imperatives" of the movement according to André Breton, quoting Rimbaud and Marx respectively: "to change life" and "to transform the world".

TEEMING VISIONS

All the works are intertwined, exploring three major founding themes of this movement. First, literary figures such as Lautréamont, Sade and, above all, Lewis Carroll, whose Alice in Wonderland often served as a standard-bearer. Then, the themes, through the prism of the poetic imagination of dreams, mothers, the forest, the artist-medium, mythological creatures and the cosmos. And finally, political engagement, through texts on anti-colonialism, the Great Wars, Black Surrealism and modern consumerism.

Combining sculptures, paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents, the Centre Pompidou offers us a truly meta, complex and plethoric look at a movement that has spread beyond genres, styles and approaches. But also beyond Paris, France and Europe. Among the women artists, we find important works by Ithell Colquhoun, Dora Maar, Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington. On a global scale, we discover the work of Tatsuo Ikeda (Japan), Helen Lundeberg (USA), Wilhelm Freddie (Denmark) and Rufino Tamayo (Mexico).

The Centre Pompidou is adding another stone to the edifice of this anniversary event by emancipating itself from its institutional framework, along with other museums in Belgium, Spain, Germany and the United States. As part of an itinerant approach, the exhibition reinterprets the movement according to the cultural and historical contexts of the different countries.

" SURREALISM" CENTER POMPIDOU
PLACE GEORGES-POMPIDOU, PARIS 4E
FROM SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 TO JANUARY 13, 2025
CENTREPOMPIDOU.FR