MUNICH — The affect of Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious on Surrealism is extensively identified, however the widespread give attention to internal drives and desires within the artists’ work obscures the truth that Surrealist appeared out on the world as a lot as in, at themselves. However Dwell Right here? No Thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism, an archive-heavy exhibition at Lenbachhaus, addresses this oversight by meticulously tracing Surrealists’ multi-pronged political activism, significantly their resistance to colonialism and fascism.
That the exhibition takes place in Germany, the place political expression is now being censored, and the place the rising variety of supporters for the nationalist occasion, AFD, evokes the somber specter of fascist ideology, isn’t unintentional. If something, it reminds viewers that artists have at all times held a mirror to society. Extra pointedly, it examines the methods through which, in occasions of political crises and struggle, they organized collaborative networks of resistance. Curators Stephanie Weber, Adrian Djukić, and Karin Althaus group these by area, beginning with Europe (significantly France, the previous Czechoslovakia, and Spain), then spreading to Egypt, Martinique, and the US.
Victor Brauner, “Totem of Wounded Subjectivity II” (1948); Centre Pompidou, Paris (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024; photograph: Picture Centre Pompidou)
To underscore the theme of cross-national mobilization, the exhibition doesn’t middle the artworks themselves — though loads of work, drawings, movies, and sculptures, most conveying stylistic and methodical affinities, are featured — as a lot because it employs them to hint artists’ lives, particularly their prolific, politically engaged writing, and their wartime displacements. Copious art-political zines and pamphlets, such because the Surrealist Marxist journal Légitime défense, are introduced in glass vitrines. Additionally included is antifascist agitprop by French artist Claude Cahun, who was despatched, together with their accomplice, Marcel Moore, to a Nazi internment camp on the Channel Islands. One evocative {photograph} exhibits Cahun biting down on a pin within the form of a swastika.
The curators make a salient level that many Surrealists’ insistence on exposing the oppression underlying most fashionable political techniques rendered their artwork so helpful as a political instrument. A number of the artists and artwork teams highlighted within the curatorial texts, such because the French La Predominant à plume, joined the armed wrestle in opposition to the Nazis. Others, like André Breton, established formal revolutionary associations. Breton’s assembly with the Mexican painter Diego Riviera and Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico Metropolis, the place Breton and Trotsky based the Worldwide Federation of Unbiased Revolutionary Artwork (F.I.A.R.I.), is immortalized with {a photograph} by Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo, “Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky and André Breton” (1938) (© Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C)
Political and philosophical publicity superior the creative evolution of a number of artists as effectively. When Cuban Wifredo Lam, like Breton, exiled from France to Martinique, he got here into contact with the distinguished anti-colonialist thinkers and writers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, who printed the Surrealist journal Tropiques (1941–44). Because the wall textual content notes, this propitious assembly superior Lam’s syncretic Afro-Caribbean model. His macabre etching collection, Annonciation (printed in 1969–71), which depicts entwined, tortured skeletal creatures, accompanied by Aimé Césaire’s poems, exemplifies Surrealism’s energy to convey unspeakable horrors — as do many extra works, from Max Ernst’s allegorical “Angel of Hearth and Home” (1937), painted in response to Francisco Franco’s brutal victory over the Republican fighters within the Spanish Civil Conflict, to the collectively made “The Grand tableau antifasciste collectif” (Nice Collective Anti-Fascist Portray, 1960) — a sprawling, dense canvas teeming with convulsed limbs, devouring mandibles, and intimate, torn physique elements, painted to protest the torture and rape of Djamila Boupacha, an activist of the Algerian Nationwide Liberation Entrance (FLN).
Regardless of its cheeky title, However to Dwell Right here? No Thanks doesn’t advocate for exile or flight, however quite affords some measured hope in these darkening occasions, as an pressing research within the fluid but significant art-political networks that confused solidarity and unity over isolation.
Set up view of However Dwell Right here? No Thanks. Surrealism and Anti-fascism at Lenbachhaus, Munich. Pictured: Antonio Recalcati, Enrico Baj, Erró, Gianni Giancarlo Dova, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Roberto Crippa, ““The Grand tableau antifasciste collectif” (Nice Collective Anti-Fascist Portray) (1960), portray and collage on canvas (photograph by Lukas Schramm, Lenbachhaus)
René Magritte, “The Earth’s Shadow” (1928); TEA Tenerifa Espacio de las Artes, Cabildo de Tenerife (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024)
Claude Cahun, “Doll 2” (Unique print 1936); Musée d’artwork moderne de la Ville de Paris (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024; photograph: bpk / Paris Musées, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Claude Cahun)
Victor Brauner and Wifredo Lam, “Untitled” (1941); Musée d’artwork moderne de la Ville de Paris (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024; photograph: bpk / Paris Musées, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / picture Beaux-arts de Paris)
Remedios Varo, “My Little General (The Marquis de la Contre-Croupe)” (1959); Non-public assortment (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024, courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris)
Pablo Picasso, “The Dream and Lie of Franco” (1937); Musée d’artwork moderne de la Ville de Paris (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024; photograph: bpk / Paris Musées, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / picture ville de Paris)
Toyen, “Abandoned Burrow” (1937); GAVU Cheb (© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024)
Kati Horna and Wolf Hamburger (WoTi), “Hitler Egg” 3/5 (1936), black and white {photograph} (© Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna)
However Dwell Right here? No Thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism continues at Lenbachhaus (Luisenstraße 33, Munich, Germany) via March 30. The exhibition was curated by Stephanie Weber, Adrian Djukić, and Karin Althaus, with Assistant Curator Johannes Michael Stanislaus.