(AGENPARL) – mar 20 febbraio 2024 (https://kmskbe.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/Down/EpRHw2BdyRRNjVxLuvsUQQABEd9_7i_k5–IzK4k89KLqQ?e=ZUga26) Press release
IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium present IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism (https://fine-arts-museum.be/en/exhibitions/imagine), an international touring exhibition conceived in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou (Paris). This exhibition-event opens on 21 February 2024, as part of the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton. 
Through almost 140 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, objects, assemblages and photographs, explore the poetry of the world's most famous Surrealists, from Max Ernst to Giorgio de Chirico, including Salvador Dalí, Dora Maar, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Leonor Fini, Man Ray, Jane Graverol, Paul Delvaux, Dorothea Tanning and many others.
The exhibition takes the public into the labyrinths of the artists' subconscious, in pursuit of the chimeras of surrealism, between mythological creatures, magic realism, dreamlike landscapes and daydreams. Dreams that sometimes turn into nightmares, as in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), a 1936 masterpiece painted by Salvador Dalí, on exceptional loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
After Brussels, the exhibition will move on to Paris, continue its international tour in Spain (at the Fundación Mapfré Madrid) and Germany (at the Hamburger Kunsthalle), and end in the United States at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each institution will be offering a specific perspective, with works from its own collection. For this first stop in Brussels, the RMFAB are proposing to discover another face of Surrealism by making the link with Symbolism, from which the Surrealist movement draws its roots. It's an original proposal that looks at Surrealism through the prism of the imagination, the real thread running through the exhibition, and its ability to free thought from its shackles.
Since 1 January, Belgium has held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and it is in this context that Brussels is inaugurating the first stage of this touring exhibition, a reminder of the decisive role played by Brussels in the emergence of Surrealism. From 1880 onwards, the Belgian capital was a crossroads for artistic currents and avant-gardes, as demonstrated by the exhibitions of the groups Les XX and La Libre Esthétique. Symbolism, embodied in particular by Félicien Rops, Léon Spilliaert, Fernand Khnopff and Jean Delville, developed here and largely anticipated the emergence of the Surrealist movement. A few decades later, Brussels became the home of Belgian Surrealism. Despite the cultural rupture caused by the First World War, the old Symbolists and the emerging Surrealist youth were not fundamentally alienated from each other. 
Women artists from the Surrealist movement account for almost a third of the works on offer.  Toyen, Jane Graverol, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Marion Adnams, Meret Oppenheim, Valentine Dobrée… Although their names are still little known to the general public, women Surrealist artists are beginning to reclaim their place in the movement and, more broadly, in the history of art. The RMFAB are promoting them by including them all indifferently in this exhibition. 
IMAGINE! is presented as an anthology of nine themes from both the Symbolist and Surrealist worlds. After an introduction to André Breton and his Manifesto, visitors are plunged into the disruptive world of Surrealist poetry, through the theme of the Labyrinth. The tour continues with a succession of recognisable poetic themes, tinged with literature and philosophy, such as Night, Forest, Mental Landscapes, Dream and Nightmare, Chimera, Metamorphoses and Myths, and Tears of Eros. The exhibition concludes with the theme of the Cosmos, illustrated by Max Ernst's 1969 masterpiece Birth of a Galaxy, which explores the new horizons opened up by man's first steps on the moon at a time when the Surrealist movement in Paris was being dismantled…
HD pictures & press release (https://kmskbe.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/Down/EpRHw2BdyRRNjVxLuvsUQQABEd9_7i_k5–IzK4k89KLqQ?e=ZUga26)