Caught between fantasy and reality, the birth of surrealism in art was a profound moment of personal expression and psychological investigation. Just a few weeks remain before the doors close on a compelling landscape exhibition in New York City.
Melting clocks, irregular forms, mysterious spaces, and optical oddities are all commonplace and, perhaps, normal for the surrealist artist. Although the enigmatic Salvador Dalí may be the first name called to mind when Surrealism is mentioned, a wide variety of artists experimented with the metaphysical style as early as the 18th century. For the surrealist, the choice of subject was, as one would expect, nearly infinite in possibility, but “Fields of Dream” at Di Donna Gallery in New York City is taking a look at the style’s exploration of landscape through the eyes of 31 masters.
From the gallery’s website: “Encyclopedic in scope, the exhibition opens chronologically with a 17th century anthropomorphic landscape after Matthäus Merian the Elder, and unravels into the fertile territory of how the Surrealists expanded upon the genre of landscape. Similarly, Salvador Dalí’s Mysterious Mouth Appearing in the Back of my Nurse, 1941, presents figures in a landscape oddly composing a female head. Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico’s Méditation matinale, painted in Paris in 1911-12, is a melancholic cityscape whose vantage point looks out onto the sea, echoing with mysterious nods to antiquity. His metaphysical works became exemplary for the Surrealist movement, rekindling an interest in deep pictorial space. In his Thébes,1928, a classical Greek temple and ruins sit upon a rocky landscape, uncannily staged in a domestic interior replete with wood parquetry.”
Over six dozen artworks loaned from several public and private collections will feature in the show, which surely gives an in-depth look into one of the most controversial and creative styles ever created. The exhibition will include works by Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Alexander Calder, Leonora Carrington, Federico Castellón, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Adrien Dax, Paul Delvaux, Oscar Domínguez, Enrico Donati, Paul Eluard, Jimmy Ernst, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Arshile Gorky, Marcel Jean, Jacqueline Lamba, René Magritte, Man Ray, Matta, Joan Miró, Gordon Onslow Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Pablo Picasso, Kay Sage, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, and Antoni Tàpies.
“Fields of Dream: The Surrealist Landscape” will be on view through December 18.
To learn more, visit Di Donna Gallery.
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