Museum open at 12:00pm
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Museum open at 12:00pm
Cinema is closed now
IN THE VERY BOWELS OF CHANGES:
SURREALISM AND ANTIFASCISM
26.06.2026–10.01.2027
VICTOR BRAUNER, LA RENCONTRE DU 2 BIS RUE PERREL [THE ENCOUNTER OF 2 BIS RUE PERREL], 1946, oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art in Paris © ADAGP, Paris / ZAIKS, WarsawCurated by
Dorota Jarecka and Magda Lipska, in collaboration with Stephanie Weber, Adrian Djukić, Karin Althaus, and Paweł Polit
Artists
Jankiel Adler
Eileen Agar
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Hans Arp
John Banting
Ezekiel Barouk
Hans Bellmer
Erwin Blumenfeld
Marian Bogusz
Vladimír Boudník
Victor Brauner
André Breton
Emmy Bridgewater
Luis Buñuel
Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob)
Leonora Carrington
Laura Corsiglia
Zbigniew Dłubak
Óscar Domínguez
Inji Efflatoun
Max Ernst
Merlyn Evans
Emil Filla
Leonor Fini
František Foltýn
Esteban Francés
Wolfgang Frankenstein
Eugenio Fernández Granell
Thomas Samuel Haile
Stanley William Hayter
John Heartfield (Helmut Herzfeld)
Jindřich Heisler
Werner Heldt
Georges Henein
Jacques Hérold (Herold Blumer)
Karol Hiller
Hannah Höch
Kati Horna
František Janoušek
Ted Joans (Theodore Jones)
Marion Kalter
Fouad Kamel
Tadeusz Kantor
Ida Kar
Katarzyna Kobro
Aleksander Krzywobłocki
Jerzy Kujawski
Wifredo Lam
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Johannes Lederer
Alfred Lenica
Jean Lurçat
Dora Maar (Henriette Théodora Markovitch)
Conroy Maddox
René Magritte
Jeanne Mammen
André Masson
Roberto Matta
Leonore Mau
Willy Maywald
Jadwiga Maziarska
F.E. McWilliam
Mikuláš Medek
Katja Meirowsky
Kazimierz Mikulski
Lee Miller
Joan Miró
Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe)
Arturo Nathan
Amy Nimr
Wolfgang Paalen
Roland Penrose
Pablo Picasso
Pere Portabella
Alice Rahon (Paalen)
Vilém Reichmann
Alain Resnais
Edith Rimmington
Erna Rosenstein
Alberto Sánchez
Hans Rudolf Schiess
Kurt Seligmann
Jerzy Skarżyński
Humphrey Spender
Jonasz Stern
Władysław Strzemiński
Jindřich Štyrský
Eva Sulzer
Marian Szulc
Bogusław Szwacz
Yves Tanguy
Karel Teige
Hervé Télémaque
Franciszka Themerson
Stefan Themerson
Václav Tikal
Toyen (Marie Čermínová)
Heinz Trökes
Raoul Ubac
Remedios Varo
Alois Wachsman
Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze)
Kati Horna and Wolf Hamburger (WoTi)
Ramses Younan
Enrique Zañartu
Unica Zürn
Teresa Żarnower
As an artistic and political movement, Surrealism had an international reach and internationalist beliefs. Rooted in art and literature, it cherished much wider ambitions: to revolutionize society and redefine life itself. “‘Transform the world,’ said Marx; ‘change life,’ said Rimbaud: these two goals make only one for us,” André Breton declared in 1935.
Since their emergence in the 1920s, Surrealists have confronted a number of political programs that contradicted the ideals of equality and freedom. They would condemn Europe’s colonial projects, organize themselves against fascists, fight in the Spanish Civil War, join the resistance during World War II—to be denounced as “degenerate” by the Nazi, face internment or persecution, ultimately flee Europe or die on the battlefields or in camps. Their resistance was art itself. Through poetry, painting, photography, collage, and exhibition-making they strived to expose flaws in the supposedly rational message of the supposedly rational civilization of the West.
As fascism gained ground in Europe, as Nazification of Germany progressed, as World Wars and colonial wars broke out—Surrealists wouldn’t budge; protagonists of Surrealism remained radical in their ideological and political choices. At the same time, these upheavals resulted in extraordinary encounters and a truly global solidarity: Prague would stand with Coyoacán, Mexico; Cairo, with the Spanish Republic; Marseille, with Martinique’s Fort-de-France; Puerto Rico and Paris, with Chicago; and London, with New York. Surrealist thought and action have had an all-encompassing simultaneousness to them. Accordingly, the show unfolds as if on a map rather than a timeline. The intent here is to present Surrealism as an international movement invested heavily in society and politics—in line with how its members perceived it.
VICTOR BRAUNER
LA RENCONTRE DU 2 BIS RUE PERREL [THE ENCOUNTER OF 2 BIS RUE PERREL]
1946
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art in Paris
© ADAGP, Paris / ZAIKS, Warsaw
LEONORA CARRINGTON
L’ARCHE DE NOÉ [NOAH’S ARK]
ca 1938
oil on canvas
Private collection
© ADAGP, Paris / ZAIKS, Warsaw
MAX ERNST
TÊTE DE L’ANGE DU FOYER [HEAD OF “THE FIRESIDE ANGEL”]
ca 1937
oil on canvas
The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, Berlin
© ADAGP, Paris / ZAIKS, Warsaw
KURT SELIGMANN
COMPOSITION SURRÉALISTE [SURREALIST COMPOSITION]
1956
acrylic on canvas
The Mayor Gallery
© The Mayor Gallery
© The Mayor Gallery
YVES TANGUY
LA SPLENDEUR SEMBLABLE [THE SIMILAR RESPLENDENCE]
1930
oil on canvas
Art Museum Basel
REMEDIOS VARO
MI GENERALITO (LE MARQUIS DE LA CONTRE-CROUPE) [MY LITTLE GENERAL (THE MARQUIS OF COUNTER-CROUP)]
1959
oil on masonite
Private collection
VEGAP, Madrid / ZAIKS, Warszawa
Surrealists demanded absolute freedom, and wanted it to permeate every section of society. Emancipation, to them, meant life liberated from any imperative on the part of the state, the nation, the church, or the bourgeoisie. They read Freud and Sade, proclaimed anarchism and socialism, subscribed to Marxism and Communism, opposed fascism and colonialism as well as all sorts of imperialism. They lamented the lack of imagination displayed by most, feeling hurt by the common perception that their art and poetry was but an eccentric whim. Members of La Main à plume, a group operating in Paris under Nazi German occupation and circulating verse underground, once wrote: “If anyone comes to tell us that our present has other things on its mind than writing poetry, we’ll reply: ‘So do we!’” In 1924, La Révolution surréaliste persuaded their readers: “If you’re fond of love, then you’ll love Surrealism.” To Surrealists, political and artistic transgression was inseparable from the affirmation of life, from love, and from the erotic.
And it was this openness about the political and the artistic being linked together that attracted many emancipatory movements to Surrealism. The student demonstrations of May 1968, several post-war anti-totalitarian campaigns in Eastern Europe, and even the Black Liberation Movement in the United States were all inspired to an extent by Surrealist methods and beliefs. The exhibition traces these struggles as it attempts to revise the widespread preconception of Surrealism as a style in painting only meant for representing dreams, fantasies, and magic; doing away with the notion of a Surrealist canon, once again it poses this provocative question: “What is Surrealism?”
PABLO PICASSO
CABEZA DE CABALLO. BOCETO PARA „GUERNICA” [HORSE HEAD. SKETCH FOR „GUERNICA”] © Succession Picasso 2026
1937
oil on canvas
Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
The exhibition In the Very Bowels of Changes: Surrealism and Antifascism is an adaptation of a display presented at Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany, from October 15, 2024 through March 30, 2025 and originally titled Aber hier leben? Nein danke. Surrealismus + Antifaschismus [But Live Here? No Thanks: Surrealism + Anti-fascism]. The current display at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, extending that of Lenbachhaus, was produced in collaboration with Munich’s institution as well as with Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.
In Warsaw, curators Dorota Jarecka and Magda Lipska included an exploration of Surrealism as practiced in Poland and wider Eastern Europe. Another collaborating curator, Paweł Polit from Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, contributed a chapter on the collection of the a.r. group, which was assembled in the early 1930s for the then-established museum in Łódź and featured several prominent Surrealists. The chapter on Prague’s Surrealism is now more exhaustive, as are the presented wartime and post-war histories of Surrealist artists—their persecutions, flights, and lasting migrations. But most significant as an addition, perhaps, is the perspective of Holocaust studies now present in the narrative of this exhibition.
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