these emblematic female figures of the movement – ​​L’Express

When, in the autumn of 1924, André Breton introduced his collection of poetry Soluble fish by a theoretical text that he calls Manifesto of Surrealismhe is probably far from imagining that this preface would open forty years of creative effervescence of international scope. Today, one hundred years after their publication, the founding pages of the movement constitute the central point of a labyrinthine exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.

At the heart of the impressive device, the original manuscript of the Manifeston loan from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, can be discovered via an immersive audiovisual projection. Breton’s voice, which Ircam has reconstituted by cloning, with the help of artificial intelligence, serves as a most striking guide. All that remains is to follow the spiral of a 13-stage journey, both chronological and thematic, which evokes the literature at the source of surrealist inspiration, that of Lautréamont, obviously, but also of Lewis Carroll or Sade, and the mythologies associated with it, from the artist-medium to the Cosmos, via dreams, the philosopher’s stone, hybrid creatures or eroticism.

Although the official dissolution of surrealism dates back to October 1969, it has long been reduced to the pre-war period and confined to the borders of Europe, even Paris. “In light of the latest research, we now know that the movement spread throughout the world, to the United States of course, but also to Latin America, the Maghreb and Asia,” emphasizes Marie Sarré, curator of the event alongside Didier Ottinger. Thus, after his meeting with Dali in 1929, the Danish painter Wilhelm Freddie helped introduce surrealism to Scandinavia, while the Japanese Tatsuo Ikeda, born four years after the first Manifesttraces in ink the dreamlike figures inscribed in the post-war surrealist sensibility. But it is above all the place of surrealist women that has been largely reconsidered: from the 1930s, magazines and numerous international exhibitions attest to their strong presence within the movement. “No movement of the 20th century has had so many women among its active members, far from the status of muse to which they have often been reduced”, point out the curators.

Among the thirty or so Parisian venues* celebrating the centenary of surrealism in partnership with the Centre Pompidou, two are showcasing emblematic female figures of the movement. Under the expertise of historian Alyce Mahon, the Raphaël Durazzo gallery is zooming in on three pioneers who, through the freedom of their creation mixing sensuality and fantasy, activated the levers of a new image of women, freed from their role as muse and endowed with power, as evidenced by the erotic drawings of Leonor Fini, the kaleidoscopic landscapes of Dorothea Tanning and, for the first time in France, the subversive sculptures of Leonora Carrington.

A versatile creator who, from the 1930s onwards, took part in the greatest surrealist events alongside Max Ernst, Dali, De Chirico and Man Ray, Leonor Fini was also the heroine of a dazzling retrospective held at the Minsky Gallery, which lent the artist’s greatest masterpieces around the world. Even though, fiercely independent, Fini always refused to be attached to the surrealist chapel, her dreamlike works are fully in keeping with it. “My painting follows the paths that dreams take”, she declared in particular, as if echoing the Manifest from Breton – “Surrealism believes in the omnipotence of dreams”.

* Centre Pompidou until January 5, Minsky gallery until November 2, Raphaël Durazzo gallery from September 26 to November 23.

TO READ: Nusch Eluard. Under surrealism, womenby Joana Maso, Seghers editions, €22 (released September 12).