Monsters and Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s

(Hardback)

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Despite the political and personal turmoil, it was a period of surprising brilliance and fertility: avant-garde artists on both sides of the Atlantic pushed themselves to engage artistically with the psychological forces propelling contemporary history, and some of the most potent and striking images of Surrealism came into being. Trailblazing essays by four experts in the field showcase the experimental and international extent of Surrealist art during these years and, perhaps most unexpectedly of all, its irrepressible beauty. Well-known Surrealists and other artists associated with or influenced by the Surrealist movement from Picasso to Pollock--are represented by masterworks and rarities in a wide range of media. Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, Monsters and Myths breaks new ground in art history and, more broadly, offers object lessons for the artists, art lovers, and engaged citizens of our own time.

Author Bio

Oliver Tostmann is Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn. Previously he was a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, where he curated the exhibitions Anders Zorn. A European Artist Seduces America (2013); Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini. Sculptors' Drawings from Renaissance Italy (2014); and Ornament & Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice (2015).

Oliver Shell is Associate Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, curated various shows at the BMA, among them Matisse Painter as Sculpture (2007); Rodin Expression and Influence (2007); A Circus Family: Picasso to Lger (2009); Advancing Abstraction in Modern Sculpture (2010/11); and German Expressionism: A Revolutionary Spirit (2014).

Robin Adle Greeley is Associate Professor of Modern & Contemporary Latin American Art History at the University of Connecticut, and author of Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War (2006, Yale University Press).

Samantha Kavky is Associate Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University-Berks. She is co-editor of the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas and an expert on Max Ernst.