Curated by Grazina Subelyte, Associate Curator, Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Venues:
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, April 9–September 26, 2022
Museum Barberini, Potsdam, October 22, 2022–January 29, 2023

Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity is a joint exhibition project between the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Museum Barberini. It is the first large-scale international loan exhibition that looks at the movement’s interest in magic and the occult. Presenting about 60 works, in the Venetian venue, from over 40 international museums and private collections, it offers a rich overview of the entire development of the Surrealist movement, exploring the myriad ways, in which magic and the occult informed its artistic trajectory, from the “metaphysical painting” of Giorgio de Chirico around 1915, through Max Ernst’s iconic painting Attirement of the Bride (1940), to the occult imagery that underpinned the late works of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. In their works, Surrealist artists frequently drew on occult symbolism and cultivated the traditional image of the artist’s persona as a magician, seer, and alchemist, looking to magic as a poetic and deeply philosophical discourse, related to individual self-empowerment.

The exhibition’s point of departure is the world-class Surrealist holdings of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, containing iconic paintings that powerfully reflect the Surrealists’ dialogue with the occult tradition. Many of the artists represented in this show were exhibited during their lifetimes by Peggy Guggenheim, who emerged as one of the most energetic collectors and patrons of Surrealism toward the end of the 1930s. Having familiarized herself with the movement during her stay in Paris between the wars, she was on intimate terms with Max Ernst and André Breton, founder of the Surrealism with his Manifesto of Surrealism, published in October 1924.

The exhibition includes works by Victor Brauner, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Delvaux, Maya Deren, Óscar Domínguez, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, René Magritte, Roberto Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, Kay Sage, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo, among the others. Among the national and international lenders are the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The Menil Collection in Houston, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli-Torino.

magic clips

Together with the exhibition curator Gražina Subelytė, and the Curator of the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Daniel Zamani, discover the mysteries that lie behind the paintings of Victor Brauner, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, René Magritte and the other protagonists of this must-see show.

Public programs

On the occasion of the Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity exhibition, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection offered a varied program of collateral events in order to introduce and explore the themes of the exhibition in relation to Surrealism – such as occultism, magic, alchemy, the world of dreams and the subconscious. The program also aimed to celebrate the fascinating cultural and historical context that the Surrealist called “a new modernity,” or “an enchanted modernity.”