The Surrealist Impulse

The Surrealist Impulse will be the inaugural exhibition in the newly created Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries, on the second floor of the Akron Art Museum’s historic 1899 building. This exhibition brings together two different artistic movements from the early 1900s, Dada and Surrealism, along with closely related works by “Art Brut” (untrained or “raw”) creators working in the same time period. Dada was an international movement formed in the aftermath of World War I by artists and writers who turned their disgust at the carnage of the war into a broader, absurdist critique of the status quo in culture and society. Surrealism, another international movement that was rooted in Dada, continues to be a relevant form of expression about the very nature of reality and how it is represented, influencing the visual arts, literature, theater, film, and music for more than a hundred years.

In his foundational Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, André Breton called for Surrealism to be a revolution in moral and social conventions, and in life itself, supported by a new mode of creation flowing from an unrestricted subconscious. This subconscious expression—which can be alternately described as a compulsion, psychic drive, instinctual urge, or simply the surrealist impulse—could be accessed through dream states, the cultivation of hypnotic visions through séance-like sessions, and game playing and experimentation that introduced chance into artistic processes. Visual artists involved with Dada or Surrealism (or both movements, as was frequently the case) took inspiration from many sources, including their imaginations and subconscious, chance encounters, art and artifacts of Indigenous cultures in North America and Oceania, and the artistic output of children, untrained “outsider artists,” and people housed in mental health facilities. The Surrealist Impulse will illustrate the different artistic styles, techniques, and materials used by these artists, who thought of their visual images as magic windows, offering views into imaginary scenes.

This exhibition is drawn from the collections of the Parker Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Akron Art Museum, with artists including Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, Kay Sage, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Jean Dubuffet, and others.

The Paparella Galleries mark a significant new chapter for the Akron Art Museum, providing dedicated space to contextualize and deepen the Museum’s own collection through loans from peer institutions while celebrating the exceptional works already held within it. This framing nods to the origins of the McDowell Galleries as a space dedicated to exhibiting the earliest works in the collection, rooted in the history of the 1899 building.