The exhibition A Surreal Shock – Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (7 October 2023 – 21 January 2024) is an extensive introduction to Surrealism and its' revolutionary desire to challenge the status quo and exorcise the horrors of wars, and political instability in Europe in the 1920s.

The exhibition is curated in collaboration between curator at ARoS Jakob Vengberg Sevel andcurator Els Hoek from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and presents over 200 works including 180 important Surrealist artworks from the Boijmans collection. The major acquisitions were made between 1977 and 1979. This world-class collection in Rotterdam includes works by René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, and Paul Delvaux and is still being expanded thanks to recent acquisitions of Leonora Carrington and Eileen Agar amongst others.

The Boijmans’ Surrealist collection now comprises more than 125 paintings and sculptures plus a collection of rare books and publications, which attracts art lovers from all over the world. Several iconic works from this collection were originally owned by the eccentric British collector Edward James, who for several years was a patron of Dalí as well as Magritte. He is portrayed in the famous painting ‘La reproduction interdite’.

These iconic works are exhibited alongside works from ARoS' celebrated collection and other lenders across Denmark. Visitors will experience a close and rarely seen dialogue between artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar, Joan Miró, Man Ray and their Danish contemporaries Rita Kernn-Larsen, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen, Wilhelm Freddie and others.

Visitors to A Surreal Shock – Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will experience first-hand the fantastic, automatic, subconscious, and linguistic experiments of the Surrealists used to provoke and undermine the rational principles of society.

The exhibition is realized with generous support from the A.P. Møller Foundation.

Press photos can be freely downloaded from Dropbox when giving due credit.

For additional information, please contact:

Astrid Ildor · asil@aros.dk · (+45) 61 90 49 42