Photostory: Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity From the “Metaphysical Painting” to the occult symbolism

The first large-scale international loan exhibition to focus on the Surrealists’ interest in magic, alchemy, and the occult.

From April 9 through September 26, 2022 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, curated by Gražina Subelytė, Associate Curator, Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The exhibition includes about 60 works by more than 20 artists, from 40 international lenders, including prestigious museums and private collections. Chronologically, it ranges from the “metaphysical painting” of Giorgio de Chirico around 1915, through iconic paintings such as Max Ernst’s Attirement of the Bride (1940) and Victor Brauner’s The Lovers (1947), to the occult symbolism of the late works of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. The exhibition is organized by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and the Museum Barberini, Potsdam. There, it will be on view from October 22, 2022 to January 29, 2023, curated by Daniel Zamani, Curator, Museum Barberini, Potsdam.

With his Manifesto of Surrealism, published in October 1924, the French writer André Breton founded a literary and artistic movement that became the leading international avant-garde and also offered a philosophy of life. Affected by the horrific experience of World War I and II, the Surrealists rejected rationality, and chose to pursue alternative avenues: dreams, the irrational, the unconscious, but also magic, myth, alchemy, and the occult. For the artists that moved in the intellectual orbit of the movement, these were powerful ways to stimulate and free the imagination from any imposed limitations, and thus produce marvelous art works that they hoped could regenerate humanity and bring about change in the world at a time of struggle, anxiety, and profound socio-political shifts.

The exhibition’s point of departure is the world-class Surrealist holdings of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, containing emblematic paintings that reflect the Surrealists’ dialogue with the occult tradition. Many artists represented in this show were exhibited by Peggy Guggenheim, who emerged as one of the most energetic collectors and patrons of Surrealism in the late 1930s. Having familiarized herself with Surrealism during her stay in Paris between the wars, she was on intimate terms with Max Ernst and Breton.

The exhibition explores themes such as alchemy, metamorphosis and the androgyne, the tarot, the evil eye, totemic substance, invisible and cosmic dimensions, as well as the notion of the artist as a magician and woman as a magical being, goddess, and witch.

For the duration of the exhibition, in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, numerous Surrealist works that Guggenheim collected will be placed in dialogue with African and Oceanic works, with potent spiritual meaning, that are also part of the permanent collection. Oceanic cultures and their art, in particular,captivated the Surrealists due to their depiction of magical processes of metamorphoses and resistance to fixed states.

---

Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity

Curated by Gražina Subelytė, Associate Curator, Peggy Guggenheim Collection

April 9 – September 26, 2022

Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

#SurrealismandMagic

More