SURREAL LEGACIES

Hauser & Wirth Monaco is pleased to present the group exhibition “Surreal Legacies”.

September 26 – December 21, 2024

As well as suggesting echoes and affinities in the work of artists working today, “Surreal Legacies” highlights the work of earlier artists who were never formally part of Surrealism but who existed in its wider context. The influence of this movement is explored through the work of major reference figures and contemporary artists, including Ida Applebroog, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Hélène Delprat, Camille Henrot, Luchita Hurtado, Cathy Josefowitz, Allison Katz, Erna Rosenstein, and Anj Smith.

The exhibition concentrates on the work of women artists, a strength of the gallery’s program and within Surrealism as it developed. Although the movement began as a predominantly male group of artists, latterly the importance of women within, on the periphery of and following the Surrealist movement has been increasingly recognised. It connects Surrealism with feminism and later developments in contemporary art, showing this movement to have a continuing history to the present day.

Hélène Delprat evokes the work of so-called ‘dissident’ Surrealist André Masson with her punk sensibility and all-over approach to composition. Bourgeois became part of the avant-garde scene that revolved around Julien Levy Gallery. Whilst never a member of the movement itself, its impact echoes in Bourgeois’s biomorphic forms that suggest the bodily and the abject, her use of the Surrealist technique known as scraffito and strange, fantastical scenes. Unsettling dreamlike landscapes are portrayed in the work of Erna Rosenstein. Luchita Hurtado was involved in the Surrealist scene in Mexico in the 1940s. Her double-canvas painting from her Sky Skins series of the 1970s at once recalls those early Surrealist contacts and influences from American modernism, Feminism and indigenous culture.

Overall, the works on view suggest that, of the early 20th-century avant-gardes, few movements have had such an enduring impact on our understanding of the modern self, as well as on the visual language of modern life, as Surrealism.