The Mudec Museum of Cultures in Milan is hosting the exhibition Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism until July 30, 2023.
When Surrealism Was Born and What It Is
In 1924, in Paris, the artist and writer André Breton published the collection “Poisson Soluble.”
The introduction would become the First Manifesto of Surrealism, inaugurating one of the most important avant-gardes of the 20th century, founded on the irrational, the dreamlike dimension, and the deepest and intrinsic aspects of the human soul.
The Surrealists focus precisely on the human psyche, overcoming or attempting to overcome the limits imposed by reason, thus expanding reality beyond its physical boundaries and tapping into a dimension of existence that is beyond the real.
Among the main themes that animate surrealism, we find love as the core of life,
dream and madness considered as means to transcend rationality and the liberation of the individual from social conventions.
Everything rational is criticized in favor of the imaginative potentials of the unconscious that inevitably lead to the condition of “surreality“.
Especially in art, images harmoniously and profoundly reconcile, creating clear and real representations even though they are juxtaposed without any logical connection and are often, from the outset, unreal.
In addition to the liberation of the individual, from which the Surrealists drew inspiration primarily from Freud‘s studies on psychoanalysis, they also pursued the ideal of a liberation of society in a political sense, often aligning with progressive and anti-colonialist positions.
Ultimately, Surrealism, given the multiplicity of its aspects and implications, can be framed as a true attitude, an alternative way of being and conceiving the world, a completely new way of thinking capable of transforming the lives of those who, over time, have adopted it.
Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism: Masterpieces from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum
It is on this fundamental concept that the multiple themes of the new exhibition “Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism: Masterpieces from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum” develop, featuring a core of as many as 180 works.
Included in the exhibition path are paintings, sculptures, drawings, documents, and artifacts, all from the collection of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, one of the most important museums in the Netherlands, in dialogue with some works from the Permanent Collection of the Mudec in Milan.
If you are interested in all the other exhibitions in Milan, we recommend our in-depth article: Exhibitions in Milan 2023: the five not to be missed
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