SURREALISM IN AMERICAN ART Centre de La Vieille Charité, Marseille From 11 May to 26 September 2021 Curated by Eric de Chassey, professor of art history at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and Director General of the Institut National d Histoire de l Art (INHA), with Xavier Rey, heritage curator and director of the Musées de Marseille, the exhibition entitled Surrealism in American Art aimed to put forward an alternative history of post-war American art by considering the exile of artists to the United States as a new point of departure and a new way of exploring Surrealism. To this end, the exhibition brought together American works from the years 1940 1960 with significant examples of surrealist works from the 1920s and 1930s.

This alternative narrative of the survival of an American surrealist movement began when a group of artists, who first came together in Marseille around André Breton, arrived in the United States having fled a war-torn Europe. The exhibition brought together works created

in Marseille with those by the surrealist artists who had already arrived in the United States in the 1930s. It then continued with creations from the East and West Coasts, resulting from encounters between Americans and Europeans. This encounter gave rise to a new form of Surrealism, a new adventure of the mind that produced some major works as well as the expansion of Abstract Expressionism.

This French-American project showcased the wealth of Surrealism in the American collections, thanks to major loans from partners of the Musées de Marseille as part of the FRAME (French American Museum Exchange). Postponed to summer 2021 due to the public health crisis, this exhibition, co-produced by the Rmn Grand Palais and the Musées de la Ville de Marseille, was part of the 2020 Manifesta 13 Biennial, a remarkable cultural event hosted in Marseille.

184