Exhibitions | Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR

The photo depicts Max Ernst sitting at a table showing a seahorse in a magnifying glass.

Josef Breitenbach, Max Ernst with magnifying glass and seahorse, 1942, Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, Stiftung Max Ernst © Josef and Yaye Breitenbach Charitable Foundation, Courtesy Gitterman Gallery

Upcoming

Surrealistic Creatures

October 3rd, 2021 to February 6th, 2022

“Surrealistic Creatures”, an exhibition comprising around 140 works by 74 international artists, devotes itself to the world of animals and fantastical creatures. You are invited to visit this unusual zoo at Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR from October 3rd, 2021 to February 6th, 2022.

This bestiary, which dominates the image worlds of Surrealism, has never been dealt with before in an exhibition with such scope and diversity, despite the fact that numerous artists have created their own corresponding private phantoms and hybrid creatures. Sometimes these turned out to be alter egos, such as the bird in the case of Max Ernst, the dog for Dorothea Tanning or the sphinx for Leonor Fini.

The pieces, which include paintings, sculptures, works on paper, illustrated books and magazines as well as films are being shown together with literary texts. This spans an arc from the beginnings of the Surrealist movement in literature and the visual arts of the early 1920s up to the turn of this century, demonstrating the breadth of variation among the artis-tic positions.
The exhibition brings together works by the likes of André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray and Pablo Picasso, as well as lesser-known pieces and respectively, works worth rediscovering, for example by Jean Benoît, Greta Knutson, Edith Rimmington, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern or Remidios Varo. Moreover, the museum’s permanent collection will display a multitude of animal portrayals by Max Ernst that humorously and allusively populate his imaginative picture worlds.