Skip to content

Surrealism and the Dream – Thyssen Museum

Dalí - Le Miel est Plus Douce que la Sang

Salvador Dalí
Le Miel est Plus Douce que la Sang (Honey is Sweeter than Blood)
Oil on canvas, 51,5 x 61 cm.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
@VEGAP Madrid 2013

Magritte - L'Art de la Conversation

René Magritte
L’Art de la Conversation (The Art of Conversation)
Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm.
Private collection
@VEGAP Madrid 2013

Surrealism and the Dream – Thyssen Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum presents the first monographic exhibition on Surrealism and the dream, featuring 163 works by the great Surrealist masters like Dalí, Magritte and Ernst. 8 October 2013 to 12 January 2014]]>

Source: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Surrealism should not be considered just one more art movement: rather, it was an attitude tolife essentially based on a vision of interior images accessed through the flow of desire. Itsideas have had a key influence on all subsequent art and on the contemporary mindset. Thepresent exhibition aims to demonstrate that this influence has its most profound roots in theSurrealist connection between dream and image.

In order to do so, the exhibition will include examples from the wide range of media in which thislink is evident: painting, drawing, graphic work, collage, objects, sculptures, photographyand film. The Surrealists’ creative horizon encompassed all art forms that could enrich andexpand the mind, and its doors were equally open to painters, sculptors, photographers andfilmmakers who were the first to adopt the fusion of expressive genres with a multimediaaesthetic during a period of major technological advances in the production and reproduction ofimages. From this viewpoint, the role played by film was crucial.

The significant presence of female artists in the exhibition is another important feature. The large number (eleven) of women artists represented in the present exhibition, including Claude Cahun, Kay Sage, Nadja, Toyen, Dora Maar, Leonor Fini, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Ángeles Santos, Meret Oppenheim and Leonora Carrington, offers proof of the unique nature of their contribution to the Surrealist representation of dreams.

The visual material in Surrealism and the Dream is divided into eight thematic sections: 1.Those who opened up the paths (of dreams); 2. I is another (variations and metamorphosesof identity); 3. The infinite conversation (the dream is the overcoming of Babel: all languagescommunicate with each other, all languages are the same); 4. Landscapes of a different place (an alternative universe that nonetheless forms part of the existing one), 5. Irresistibleperturbations (nightmare, anxiety); 6. Beyond good and evil (a world ruled by neither moralitynor reason); 7. Where everything is possible (omnipotence, everything is possible in dreams);8. The harsh light of desire (the sex drive without the restraints of conscious life).

Related content

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary – Museum of Modern Art, New York (exhibition, 2013)

Follow us on:

Surrealism and the Dream - Thyssen Museum