The current special exhibition “Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning. Networks of Surrealism — Provenances of the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection” at the Neue Nationalgalerie opens up new insights into the wide-ranging relationships that characterised Surrealism in the 20th century. One hundred years after the “First Manifesto of Surrealism”, the exhibition traces the lives of key artists, dealersand collectors and shows the fascinating dynamics of the international movement through important works by Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, René Magritte, Joan Miró and Dorothea Tanning. The focus is particularly on provenance research: biographies of artworks are traced and document how the works found their way through Europe to exile in Mexico and the USA in the 1930s and 1940s, primarily through personal relationships and historical upheavals.
The exhibition is divided into three sections and takes visitorson a journey from Paris via Brussels to the USA and Mexico. It reveals how friendships, love affairs and business contacts favoured the circulation of art and how emigration and flight under the impact of National Socialism and war also influenced the fate of the artworks. The Pietzsch Collection thus becomes a reflection of a turbulent century — and with its object biographies provides a deep insight into the complex and often personal networks of the Surrealistsand the political challenges of the time. An accompanying brochure from the Central Archive offers in-depth insights into around twenty exemplary object biographies as well as digital access to the research findings.
