Exhibition from September 26 to November 23, 2024
In partnership with the Centre Pompidou

From 26 September to 23 November, the Galerie Raphael Durazzo presents the exhibition ‘Surrealism in the service of Distraction’, curated by surrealism specialist Alyce Mahon. This is an exhibition dedicated to major surrealist women artists, notably Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, as well as their contemporary heirs Sarah Anstis, Piper Bangs and Ginny Casey, rethinks the status of the surrealist woman artist by following the thread that links the two generations. ‘Surrealism in the service of distraction’, is under the umbrella of the Centre Pompidou surrealist itinerary that will run from 4 September 2024 to 13 January 2025, where thirty-six galleries belonging to the Comité des Galeries d’art are expanding further the Centre Pompidou show with individual exhibitions celebrating the Centenary of Surrealism. This initiative aims to offer an unprecedented insight into the exceptional creative effervescence of the Surrealist movement, born in 1924 with the publication of André Breton’s founding Manifesto. 

The title of the exhibition alludes to the Surrealist magazine “Le Surréalisme au service de la revolution” (Surrealism in the service of Revolution) with the title Surrealism in the service of distraction. Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), Leonor Fini (1907-1996) and Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) came to Surrealism not through artistic training but through discovery, recognizing in its texts and images a means of mastering their own ambitions as modern artists and women. Each played an essential role in the expansion of Surrealism beyond the first decades of experimentation through their work in oil painting, design, and sculpture.

Carrington, Fini and Tanning were recognized early on through their participation in major international exhibitions such as Alfred Barr’s Fantastic Art Dada Surrealism show at New York’s MoMA in 1936 or the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1947 as well as numerous later solo and collective exhibitions internationally. In their art, they dared to stage a surrealist vision of the world that empowered women.

In so doing, they challenged the social, moral and familial expectations of the world in which they were born in a proto-feminist way; their artistic vision transcended the studio and paved the way for younger generations to activate new images of the woman, liberated from the traditional role of muse and the ‘Other’.

‘Surrealism in the service of Distraction’, features the erotic drawings of Fini alongside the kaleidoscopic landscapes of Tanning, and for the first time in France, the subversive and mythical sculptures of Leonora Carrington which show a creative freedom that unites the sensual and the fantastic in the surrealist spirit. Their shared sense of Surrealism will be presented as manifesting a new understanding of freedom for woman through the self-portrait, the abstract nude and the matriarchal image. This legacy emerges in the art of young contemporary artists selected for the show: Sara Anstis, Piper Bangs, and Ginny Casey. The work of ‘distraction’ is the very opposite of concentration – distraction ensures the viewer comes into dialogue with the work and encompasses it rather than being encompassed by it; in this way the artwork reshapes our world, distracting us from reality and rationalism. Together, the works on show in ‘Surrealism in the service of Distraction’do commemorate Surrealism, continuing its liberatory work as we mark the 100th anniversary of the first manifesto.

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with rossogranada, the exclusive representatives of the Leonora Carrington Council in Europe, Switzerland and the UK, and the Estate of Leonor Fini.