Surreal on paper

Playful artworks that reveal the surrealist movement's evolving ideology
The avant-garde movement founded around André Breton in Paris in the mid-1920s transformed the perception of artistic media and their application. The surrealists favoured poetic strategies that placed works on paper, in their various forms, at the heart of their artistic practice. This richly illustrated book presents a large selection of drawings, collages, and print-related artworks by surrealist artists including Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Jacqueline Lamba, Joan Miró, Valentine Hugo, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Remedios Varo.
The book features four essays that collectively explore surrealist aesthetics in relation to works on paper. Topics include discussions on the role of women in the movement, the significance of biomorphic representation, and the intersections of surrealism, the occult, and contemporary culture.

Thomas Lederballe is Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. Former exhibitions include Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art (2023) and Alberto Giacometti: What Meets the Eye (2024).