All you could dream of
| 
James Gleeson: The attitude of lightning
towards a lady-mountain (1939) |
In general, surrealism is a popular (if rather neglected
in current practice) genre. Blockbuster exhibitions featuring
the genre and its close cousin Dadaism have toured the country
in the past few years to great acclaim. Just about everyone recognises
names like Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Max Ernst. It’s perhaps
less recognised that surrealism flourished in Australia for nearly
30 years.
This month, the National Gallery of Australia will
unveil its exhibition Australian Surrealism: the Agapitos/Wilson
collection to showcase work from that era. The show consists
of over 170 works from the NGA’s recent 25th Anniversary
acquisition, the Agapitos/Wilson collection.
The collection covers the period from 1925 to 1955,
and includes paintings, prints, collages, drawings, photographs
and sculptures by the leading artists associated with surrealism
in Australia, including James Gleeson, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd,
Albert Tucker, Robert Klippel, Joy Hester, James Cant, Peter Purves
Smith, and Dusan Marek, as well as lesser known artists who produced
some of their best works under its influence.
Surrealism, the great revolutionary art movement,
began in France in the 1920s. As was perhaps typical of the times,
it took a while to reach Australia in earnest; but it changed
the course of Australian art in the 1940s. A generation of Australian
artists encountered surrealism at a formative time in their careers,
and its influence transformed their art forever.
The exhibition features key works of Australian
surrealism, including James Gleeson’s 'The attitude of lightning
towards a lady – mountain', Max Dupain’s erotically
charged photographs, and Robert Klippel’s Paris drawings
of menacing hybrids of plant and machine.
“The National Gallery of Australia now has
the strongest collection of International Surrealist art in the
country,” said Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery
of Australia. “With the Agapitos/Wilson collection the Gallery
has a world standard resource of Surrealist art.”
This exhibition promises to provide a fascinating
insight into an extraordinary fertile period of Australian art,
where dreams and the subconscious transformed our views of the
world.
For more information (including a detailed essay
on the exhibition and surrealism in general) go to nga.gov.au/AustralianSurrealism.
