In 2024, Mexico celebrated its relevant role in surrealism

In 2024, the centenary of the Manifesto of Surrealism was commemorated, and Mexico was not left behind in the celebration, as the country played a relevant role in the development of this movement.

It was on October 15, 1924 when the French poet André Breton (1896-1966) published, together with his colleagues Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragón, the document that would revolutionize the way of seeing the reality by questioning the values ​​of the modern Western world. The text is considered a national treasure and is currently kept in the National Library of France.

Breton traveled to Mexico in 1938, where, among other things, he wrote, together with Diego Rivera, the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, in July of that year. He gave a series of lectures at the Mexican Art Gallery, which in 1940 hosted the International Exhibition of Surrealism, led by Wolfgang Paalen and César Moro, two painters of that movement who had taken refuge here.

Influence

Furthermore, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, Mexico was the destination of artists and writers linked to surrealism, such as Alice Rahon, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna, Chiki Weisz, Benjamin Péret and Gerardo Lizarraga, who Over time they would influence local art.

To commemorate the milestone, the international colloquium 100 years of Surrealism was organized in 2024 at the Aesthetic Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with the aim of analyze and debate the emergence of one of the most influential avant-garde movements of the 20th century, whose effects and powers re-emerge in our culture in the most varied forms and with still unsuspected consequences.. The meeting explored the development of this current in Mexico and Latin America.

As far as exhibitions are concerned, the Metropolitan Autonomous University presented The acoustics of Leonora Carrington: Art, writing and feminismswith the aim of exploring the perhaps unknown writing processes of the painter and sculptor.

Then, at the Museum of Modern Art, the public enjoyed A prickly pear and a light tower on a desk: Fictions of modernityexhibition focused on showing What defines artistic modernity in Mexico based on axes such as nationalism, internationalization, the Latin American dream, avant-garde status and the modernization of the country. Although it is not an exhibition dedicated to surrealism, it includes work by Mexican artists influenced by this movement.

Meanwhile, Alan Glass: Surprising find is a retrospective exhibition of 125 works by the surrealist artist of Canadian origin, who lived in Mexico from 1963 until his death in 2023, open at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum. Glass moved to Paris in 1953, where he became connected with the surrealist movement. A sugar skull, seen in the house of Aube, Breton’s daughter, attracted him to Mexico. In 1961 he made his first trip to the country and in 1963 he settled permanently in Mexico City.

Since it opened its doors in 1986, the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio House Museum has been dedicated to exploring the art and characters related to the pair of painters. Hence the venue received Aube Breton: A surreal stayexhibition of collagea technique that the only daughter of the padre of surrealism. The artist, who turned 89 on December 20, is perhaps one of the last people alive to know Kahlo.

Aube and Glass were friends. His correspondence, a precursor of postal art, is present in the exhibition. The site archive also records with photographs and documents the visit of Breton, his wife, Jacqueline Lamba, and Aube.

The stridency

While Paris was experiencing the surreal winds, another avant-garde movement was brewing in the cities of Puebla and Mexico. Like the surrealists, the estridentistas, originally a group of writers, showed dissatisfaction with their historical moment. In an interview at the time, Manuel Maples Arce, its founder, explained that Stridentism is a subversion against the reactionary principles that standardize the thinking of the intellectual youth of America.

The National Museum of Art, for its part, organized the exhibition Germán List Arzubide (1898-1998), life is in letterswhich reviews the career of the poet and writer who in 1922 joined the poet Maples Arce in the estridentista movement.

At the international level, the Pompidou Center in Paris won the commemorations with Surrealisman exhibition that brings together around 500 works, including painting, sculpture, drawing, texts, films and documents. The central point of the exhibition is precisely the original manuscript of the Manifesto of Surrealism.

The exhibition, first seen in a reduced format at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, then at the Pompidou Center, will travel to the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid, then to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

At the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, the exhibition Max Ernst: Surrealism, art and cinema offers a journey through the life and career of the artist, with pieces in different media: painting, sculpture, bonding, rubbingillustrated books, photography, all selected for their connections with the seventh art.