The International Surrealist Exhibition was the first exhibition that challenged the traditional way of display. It contained 229 artworks and consisted of three stages. The installation Rainy Taxi (1938) by Salvador Dalí featured an old taxi with water drizzling down on mannequins sitting inside welcomed visitors prior to the gallery entry. Behind the entrance was the Rue Surréaliste, a wide corridor of female mannequins unconventionally adorned and dressed by various artists. The corridor led to the last and the largest room with labyrinth-like passages that despite being almost without lights was filled with paintings, installations, sounds and smells that created an atmosphere a dream.

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The aim of the Degenerate Art Exhibition, attended by over two million visitors, was to demonstrate Nazi racial and cultural superiority. The curators dramatised display of texts and paintings of contemporary and primitive art. The exhibition showcased over 650 works including paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, Mare Chagall, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso, to name a few. ‘Degenerate’ art was seen as an insult to the ‘Aryan race’ of the Third Reich. The main message behind the curation was to demonstrate the ‘degenerate’ art confusing natural form, revealing a complete absence of manual and artistic skills.

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Chapter 1: Surrealist Dreams in the International Exposition of Surrealism in Paris

The overview of the exhibition
Surrealist manifesto and the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis 

Dreams and the feminine
The fantasy of the intra-uterine life in the curation
The intra-uterine fantasy in art
The exhibition as the Surrealist world of dreams

 

Chapter 3: Two Exhibitions Against Nazi Opposition to Imagination at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Münich

The Degenerate Art Exhibition
The response to the exhibition
The response of Surrealists in Paris
The response of the Surrealists in Cairo 50 Nazi opposition to imagination
The aims of Surrealists