London International Surrealist Exhibition

The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from 11 June to 4 July 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries, near Savile Row in London's Mayfair, England.

Organisers

The exhibition was organised by committees from England, France, Belgium, Scandinavia and Spain.

The English organising committee consisted of:

The French organising committee were:

The remaining nations had a single committee representative:

The number of exhibits, paintings, sculpture, objects and drawings displayed during the exhibition's run was around 390.

Danish painter Wilhelm Freddie's entries never made it to the exhibition, as they were confiscated by British Customs representatives for being pornographic. According to ruling law at the time, the works had to be destroyed, but this was avoided at the last minute and they were despatched back to Denmark.

Exhibitors

The following artists participated in the exhibition:

The following individuals exhibited objects:

The following nations were represented at the exhibition:

Exhibition programming

The exhibition was officially opened in the presence of about two thousand people by André Breton. The average attendance for the entire run of the Exhibition was about a thousand people per day.

Over the course of the Exhibition, the following lectures were delivered to large audiences:

  • 16 June – André Breton – Limites non-frontières du Surréalisme.
  • 19 June – Herbert Read – Art and the Unconscious.
  • 24 June – Paul Éluard – La Poésie surréaliste.
  • 26 June – Hugh Sykes Davies – Biology and Surrealism.
  • 1 July – Salvador Dalí – Fantômes paranoïaques authentiques.

The most iconic image of the exhibition is the opening day performance of Sheila Legge, who stood in the middle of Trafalgar Square, posing in a white, drop tail hemmed wedding dress ensemble inspired by a Salvador Dalí painting, with her head completely obscured by a flower arrangement.[4] In one variation of the images capturing her performance, pigeons are perched on her outstretched, gloved arms.[4]

Dalí's lecture was delivered whilst wearing a deep-sea diving suit. Nearly suffocating during the presentation, Dalí had to be rescued by the young poet David Gascoyne, who arrived with a spanner to release him from the diving helmet. During the exhibition, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas carried around a cup of boiled string, asking visitors would they rather it "weak or strong?"[5]

The exhibition's catalog (and guide) was printed by the Women's Printing Society, a British publishing house dedicated to employing women.[6][7]

Legacy

In a survey of Surrealist group exhibitions, art historian Yuko Ishii includes the 1937 Japanese touring exhibition Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten in a chronology that follows the 1936 London show and precedes the 1938 Paris Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme.[8] More recently, the catalogue for the international survey exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021–2022) treats the Copenhagen and London Surrealist exhibitions as key early models of Surrealist exhibition-making, presenting them as a pattern for communicating Surrealist ideas and affirming communal activity.[9] The catalogue also reproduces an installation view of the 1936 London exhibition photographed by Roland Penrose.[10]

References

  1. ^ "Composition - Leeds Art Fund". www.leedsartfund.org. Archived from the original on 19 August 2017.
  2. ^ http://prentwerkartbooks.blogspot.co.uk/
  3. ^ Hessellund, Birgit (1995). "Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904 - 1998)" (in Danish). KVINFO. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  4. ^ a b Penelope Rosemont (2000). Surrealist Women, An International Anthology. Texas: The University of Texas Press. pp. 88–90. ISBN 9780567171283. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  5. ^ "Dylan Thomas". dylan.llgc.org.uk. Archived from the original on 19 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  6. ^ International Surrealist Exhibition (PDF). Women's Printing Society, Ltd. 1936. OCLC 9735630. Retrieved 27 September 2022 – via Monoskop.
  7. ^ Crawford, Elizabeth (20 October 2020). "The Women's Printing Society". The British Library. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
  8. ^ Ishii, Yuko (5 March 2019). "シュルレアリスムと展覧会カタログ（1）" [Surrealism and exhibition catalogues (1)] (PDF). 哲學年報 (in Japanese). 78. Kyushu University: 130–131. Retrieved 11 February 2026.
  9. ^ D'Alessandro, Stephanie; Gale, Matthew (26 October 2021). "The World in the Time of the Surrealists". Surrealism Beyond Borders. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-58839-727-0.
  10. ^ Surrealism Beyond Borders. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 26 October 2021. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-58839-727-0.

Sources

51°30′35″N 0°08′28″W / 51.50972°N 0.14111°W / 51.50972; -0.14111

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