Mapfre Foundation travels through the history of surrealism in a new sample in Madrid, along with the Japanese Nomira

‘1924. Other surrealisms’ It gathers works by Dalí or Magritte Varo, while Sakiko Nomira’s sample is his first great retrospective in Spain

MADRID, 4 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Mapfre Foundation The exhibitions has presented this Tuesday in Madrid ‘1924. Other surrealisms’in which he travels the history of surrealism with works by key artists of the movement as Max Ernst, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí o Varo remediesy ‘Tender is the night’of the Japanese Sakiko died. Both can be visited from this Thursday, February 6 until May 11, at its headquarters in the Paseo de Recoletos, number 23, in the capital.

The presentation has had the participation of the commissioner of ‘1924: other surrealisms’, Diego star; Sakiko Nomura commissioner, Enrique Juncosa, along with Sakiko Nomura and the director of Mapfre Foundation Culture, Nadia Arroyo.

In the case of ‘1924: other surrealisms’, the sample consists of 200 works and is divided into three thematic blocks. The first of them presents the thesis of the sample through the study of various readings of surrealism, determined by the proximity or remoteness of André Breton’s postulates. From here, throughout the route there is a reflection on the great themes and strategies that worried these artists: sleep, desire, psychic automatism, relations with nature, the new vision of the city, the cosmos or alchemy.

Therefore, throughout its route, the exhibition shows both works by great teachers and ‘The Aphrodisiac phone’ by Salvador Dalí (1938) or the work ‘Dog barking to the moon’ by Joan Miró (1926), as well as’ Marcel Jean Surrealist Cabinet (1941) as others more unknown to the general public such as Maruja Mallo of his oil on Table ‘The Maho/Pim Pam Pum’ (1926) or the artists Nicolás de Lekuona, Amparo Segarra and José Alemany.

“The role of Maruja Mallo in surrealism has been, for too long, unfairly relaxed to the background. If the artist had been born elsewhere, today he is considered a milestone of the movement, a central figure in the history of surrealist art “Diego’s star police station has detailed.

Precisely, the sample includes the work of 35 creators (Remedios Varo, Maruja Mallo, Maria Martins, Gala Dalí, Toyen, Ithell Colquhoun, Amparo Segarra, Alice Rahon, Marion Adnams, Leonora Carrington or Dorothea Tanning, among others) in an attempt to return them to the place that corresponds to them in their own right in the evolution of the surrealist group.

At a press conference, The commissioner also explained that one of the most “innovative” approaches to the exhibition is her final map because it defies the classical perception of surrealism Well, instead of limiting Paris as an epicenter, other regions such as Buenos Aires, Mexico or Tenerife are. At this point, he highlighted the role of Raquel Forner and his library in Buenos Aires, which served as a meeting point for the dissemination of surreal ideas.

“For surrealists, dreams and unexpected associations were fundamental, so it has been tried to reflect that in the exhibitioncombining works that perhaps at first glance would have no relationship, but that together generate a new reading, “the police station has detailed.

The exhibition is registered within the framework of the international celebration of Surrealism, organized on the occasion of the centenary of the ‘first manifesto of the movement’, written by André Breton, in 1924. The sample has been reinterpreted in the Royaux des Beaux Musées Arts de Belgique (Brussels) and in the Center Pompidou (Paris). After passing through Mapfre Foundation, he will travel to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in Hamburg (from June 13 to October 12, 2025), and Al Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia (from November 2025 to February 2026).

In addition, with this exhibition, Mapfre Foundation starts ‘Counterpoints‘, an initiative that allows Listen during the visit literary texts written for the occasion and other historical related to some of the works. For this reason, the curator has emphasized that the objective of the exhibition “is to attract attention to the forgotten surrealism and play with surprise.”

The importance of photography

Regarding the second sample, the first great retrospective in Spain of the Japanese photographer Sakiko Nomura, composed of 142 snapshots, takes its title of the famous novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald ‘Tender is the night’, published in 1934. The protagonists of the Exhibition scenes are young, attractive and show the power and tension of erotic power, but with great tenderness.

“It is not simply about photographing a naked body, but about a relationship between two people, an encounter in a shared time and space“Nomura said.

This artist is known for her nudes in black and white, in night atmospheres, mysterious and full of shadows. Likewise, their works do not present a chronological order by which the exhibition route is presented, in most of the rooms, based on the photographs that make up their photolibros.

The commissioner of Sakiko Nomura, Enrique Juncosa, has stressed that “Nomura forces to question the way in which the body has traditionally looked at in photography. His work is not only provocative, but also deeply intimate and poetic.”

The exhibition is divided into several thematic rooms: nighttime trips, flowers, naked, photolibros, dark impressions and documentary projects where the visitor can see works such as ‘Night Flight’, ‘Fate in Spring’ or ‘Naked Room’.

It also consists of a selection of images made in Granada during the summer of 2024, along with 18 photolibros and a film created from three shorts-‘Hiroki’, ‘Flower’ and ‘Sea’-directed by the artist herself .

“Saki Konomura is a woman who breaks with the rules, with the stereotypes of an entire history of photography centered in the nude, but also puts the focus on the male body with a look that emerges from the dark” has declared Juncosa, He recalled that “Nomura is one of the first women to stand out in the Japanese photography of the 90s, and that it was formed under the influence of Nobuyoshi Araki, a renowned Japanese photographer.”

Both exhibitions can be visited from Monday to Sunday, at the headquarters of the Foundation in the capital.