Masterpieces from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum
180 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, documents, and artifacts, from the collection of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, one of the most important museums in the Netherlands, in dialogue with some works from the Permanent Collection.
The curatorship of the exhibition is entrusted to art historian Els Hoek, the museum’s curator, with the collaboration of Alessandro Nigro, professor of History of Art Criticism at the University of Florence, who is particularly entrusted with the exhibition’s thread on the fundamental as much as complex and articulated relationship between Surrealism and non-Western cultures, thus reminding once again how the venue of a Museum of Cultures such as Mudec lends itself perfectly as the ideal location to host initiatives aimed at stimulating dialogue and confrontation between different cultures. And this exhibition is the outcome of a research project on a very stimulating artistic ‘syncretism’ that manifested itself both in Europe and overseas.
Particular attention is given to exploring the fundamental themes on which Surrealist research focused-dream and reality, psyche, love and desire, a new model of beauty-and through works by lesser-known Surrealists, publications, and historical documents, provides the public with a 360-degree view of the Surrealist universe.
The wide selection of masterpieces presented in the exhibition tells the visitor what the main premises and motivations of the Surrealists were: using found objects, automatic techniques or game-like rules, the artists attempted to exclude the rational, hoping to create a poetic shock that would change the world.
The six sections present the world of Surrealism, the vision and multifacetedness of Surrealist manifestations in the most diverse artistic fields: paintings, works on paper, publications and objects, sculptures… the Surrealist attitude pervades the rooms, one after the other, in a 360-degree journey.
Each section is introduced by a key sculpture or iconic object, which speaks to the visitor by evoking the theme of the section, and by a quotation, which tells and reminds the audience how surrealism was first and foremost also a philosophical manifesto, poetic thought, a glimpse and enchantment of an ‘other’ reality.
