What is Surrealism? And what did it become in the hands of women artists? The Surrealist gallery is one of the most visited in the Museum. Surrealism connects our daily lives to the world of fantasy, dreams, and desire. While figures like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Max Ernst are often the names that come to mind, a host of intriguing women were associated with the Surrealist movement that emerged between the World Wars, including Claude Cahun, Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, Meret Oppenheim, and Remedios Varo. These artists both championed Surrealist ideas and pushed against them to create work in which they could explore their unconscious mind and worldly identity.
Join actor and writer Abbi Jacobson, star of Broad City and host of our A Piece of Work podcast, and Anne Umland, MoMA’s Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, for a live Q&A on Monday, November 23, as they explore Surrealism’s creative attraction for women artists and its revolutionary potential then and now. Below, explore all of this Virtual View’s celebration of Surrealism’s cross-media experiments and collaborations: Read poems inspired by Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim, play your own Surrealist game, learn how one woman helped MoMA save artist refugees during World War II, and much more.
