"Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s" (Feb 24, 2019 - May 26, 2019) The Baltimore Museum of Art

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For Picasso and Dali fans, this looks like a worthy trip up to Baltimore.  This appears to be a ticketed exhibit with timed entry, tickets available on the BMA's website.

Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s

Nearly 90 Surrealist masterworks of the 1930s and 1940s by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and André Masson are presented through a timely lens—that of war, violence, and exile.

Despite the political and personal turmoil brought on by the Spanish Civil War and World War II, avant-garde artists in Europe and those who sought refuge in the United States pushed themselves to create some of the most potent and striking images of the Surrealist movement. Monstrosities in the real world bred monsters in paintings and sculpture, on film, and in the pages of journals and artists’ books, resulting in a period of extraordinary creativity.

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Washington Post review.

"The Baltimore exhibition demonstrates that a movement rooted in exploration of the individual consciousness could also take up collective themes and political content. It was an ugly time, and much of this art is relentless, cries of the heart against the defining din of barbarism. But surrealist artists were engaged with the world at a time when all too many people retreated into mute horror or escapism — neither of them effective, or responsible."

[DonRocks]

On 3/6/2019 at 10:22 AM, Tweaked said:

Washington Post review.

"The Baltimore exhibition demonstrates that a movement rooted in exploration of the individual consciousness could also take up collective themes and political content. It was an ugly time, and much of this art is relentless, cries of the heart against the defining din of barbarism. But surrealist artists were engaged with the world at a time when all too many people retreated into mute horror or escapism — neither of them effective, or responsible."

I went to this exhibit last Wednesday. The excellent Philip Kennicott isn't quite correct about one thing - he writes:

"It begins with psychological dream worlds and paintings made in response to the Spanish Civil War, and ends in the United States with surrealism partly fading and partly morphing into abstract expressionism."

It (both the arc and the exhibition) actually begins with paintings made in response to the end of World War I (Surrealism having sprouted from Dadaism in the early 1920s), which predates the Spanish Civil War. In particular, the very first gallery in this exhibition is dedicated to minotaurs, of all things - "Minotaure" was also the name of an avant-garde art magazine published from 1933-1939.

Coincidentally, the very first painting the viewer is hit with in this exhibition is one we have a thread on: "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, (Premonition of Civil War)" by Salvador Dalí.