La riscoperta di Dada e Surrealismo—introducing Daniel Gallagher, our new Rome correspondent

After a stroll through the Roman Forum, visitors to the Eternal City these days are just a few steps from one of the most impressive and comprehensive exhibitions of dadaistic and surrealistic art ever realized. Noted art historian and theorist Arturo Schwarz, curator of the exhibition underway at the Vittoriano and once owner of many of its pieces (since donated to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem), has brought together over 500 oil paintings, drawings, sculptures, readymades, collages, assemblages, and photomontages to showcase the enormous variety of twentieth-century avant-gardism. Having befriended André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Man Ray, he knows Dada and Surrealism as well as anyone. In the introductory video to the exhibit, Schwarz explains that his primary goal is to highlight a major difference between Dadaism and Surrealism: while the former openly rejected the past, the latter maintained a keen interest in both ancient (Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles) and modern (Hegel, Freud, and Marx) philosophy. Entitled “La riscoperta di Dada e Surrealismo”, the collection presents both movements as serious cultural and political revolutions rather than merely artistic genres. The title “rediscovery” also refers to the enormous number of artists who worked in the surrealist mode, perhaps the most cosmopolitan of any style in the history of art.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts
