MARUANI MERCIER, Master of Surrealism, Group Show

This summer, MARUANI MERCIER’s annual homage to the icons of modern art turns its lens to Surrealism, not as a single vision, but as a shifting terrain shaped by artists like Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia and Yves Tanguy, each of whom made the movement unmistakably their own. Far from a fixed style, Surrealism emerged as a field of tension between collective ideals and radical individuality. Rooted in dreams, desire, and psychic liberation, and rising from the ashes of Dada, its influence has long outlasted the conditions that gave rise to it. Officially inaugurated with André Breton’s 'Manifesto of Surrealism' in 1924, the movement sought to free thought from the shackles of reason and morality. Inspired by Freud and Marx, its adherents, poets, philosophers, and painters, ventured into the irrational, the erotic, and the fantastic. Together, these visual artists forged a shared language of dreamscapes, unconscious impulses, and uncanny juxtapositions, each in radically individual terms.