BALTIMORE, MD – The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) presents the first major exhibition to examine how 20th-century European and American Surrealist artists used monsters and mythic figures to depict their experiences of war, violence, and exile. Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s includes 90 works by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Dorothea Tanning, and others who were affected by the political turmoil of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. On view in Baltimore February 24–May 26, 2019, this ticketed exhibition is co-organized by the BMA and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
During the pivotal years between the world wars, European and American avant-garde artists responded to the rise of Hitler and the spread of Fascism by creating some of the most compelling images of the Surrealist movement. Monstrosities in the real world bred monsters in paintings and sculpture, on film, and in the pages of journals and artists’ books. The BMA’s exhibition is organized with thematic sections that focus on prominent subjects such as the Minotaur, as well as sections on the artists’ responses to social and political upheavals, including Premonition of War, The Spanish Civil War, World War II, and Surrealism in the Americas. Exhibition highlights include Picasso’s Minotauromachy (1935), Dalí’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of a Civil War) (1936), Ernst’s Europe After the Rain II (1940–42), and Masson’s There Is No Finished World (1942). Among the works by American artists responding to the war are Rothko’s The Syrian Bull (1943) and Tanning’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1945/46). The exhibition concludes with two films: Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Dalí and Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren.
Both the BMA and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art were at the forefront of promoting Surrealist art in the United States. The Wadsworth presented the first U.S. exhibition of Surrealist art in 1931. One of the BMA’s most generous donors, Saidie Adler May, collected works by Surrealist and other European and American avant-garde artists and gave many of them to the museum. She also provided the funds to rescue artist André Masson and his family from Nazi-occupied France in May 1941. Six months later, the BMA presented the first U.S. retrospective of Masson’s work, which opened on October 31, 1941.
Monsters & Myths is co-organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. The Baltimore presentation is curated by Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture Oliver Shell.
The exhibition is generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets are available through artbma.org. Prices are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors, $12 for groups of 7 or more, $10 for students with ID, and $5 for youth ages 7–18. BMA Members and children age 6 and under are admitted free. For more information, call 443-573-1701 or visit: https://www.artbma.org
