DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts announced today the recent acquisition of four major works by surrealist artists: Alice Rahons Androgyne, 1946, brass wire and sheet; and Painting for a Little Ghost Who Couldnt Learn to Read, 1947, oil and sand on canvas; and Remedios Varos Caja de Jean Nicolle (Jean Nicolles Box),1948, oil, wood, glass, metal leaf, ferrous metal, and masonite. The fourth work, Rita Kernn-Larsens And Life Anew
1940, currently on view at the DIA, was previously announced by the museum.
These works demonstrate the important contributions of women artists to the surrealist movement, many of whom are only now beginning to receive the recognition that their male counterparts have enjoyed for decades. They also illustrate the experimental nature of mid-20th century surrealist practice and provide further nuance to the story of the displacement of European artists, intellectuals, and others during World War II.
We are thrilled to bring examples by Kernn-Larsen, Rahon, and Varo into the DIAs collection, said Jill Shaw, the DIAs Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art, 1850-1970. While these women were all known by their peers, as well as larger international audiences during their careers, American museums have only very recently eyed them for inclusion in their permanent collections.
Androgyne and Painting for a Little Ghost Who Couldnt Learn to Read by Alice Rahon
The two works by French poet-artist Alice Rahon, Androgyne and Painting for a Little Ghost Who Couldnt Learn to Read represent her work in multiple mediums during the 1940s, after World War II prompted her to flee Europe.
Although she was known to share a variety of origin stories about herself, Rahon was born in 1904 in eastern France, and her family moved to Paris in 1920. She married artist Wolfgang Paalen in 1934 and the couples circle in Paris included artists involved in surrealism, including the leader of the movement, André Breton, who took an interest in her poetry and arranged for it to be published by Éditions Surréalistes.
In 1939, Rahon met Frida Kahlo in Paris during the group show Mexique, where Kahlo presented her paintings for the first time. The Paalens left Europe for Mexico on the eve of World War II and took up residence in the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City near Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera.
Rahons paintings are highly symbolic and often based on personal, lived experiences. Painting for a Little Ghost depicts whimsical characters, some of whom are biomorphic in form, others who fly kites are composed of triangular and diamond-shaped lozenges. After arriving in Mexico City, Rahon began painting the subjects of her journey and the colors and landscapes of her new country.
Caja de Jean Nicolle (Jean Nicolles Box) by Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo made fewer than 400 works of art during her career, over half of which are drawings, and created a few painted wood constructions such as Caja de Jean Nicolle (Jean Nicolles Box), which the Spanish-born artist made while in Venezuela.
Varo was born in Spain in 1908, but her engagement with surrealism spanned countries and continents. In 1930, after receiving comprehensive training at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid the school attended by Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso Varo married anarchist painter Gerardo Lizarraga and moved to Barcelona where she joined the avant-garde Grupo Logicophobista. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she fled to Paris with surrealist poet Benjamin Péret and was enmeshed in the activities of the surrealists. Forced into exile again due to World War II, Varo emigrated to Mexico.
Varos experimental work is exacting, meticulous, and deliberate, with Caja de Jean Nicolle exemplifying that methodology. The reverse painted glass panels were executed in a manner opposite from painting on canvas: she creatively conceived the compositions from front to back, painting the smallest physiognomic and symbolic details first, and she worked her way back to create the general forms of the bovine figures that dominate the picture plane.
And Life Anew
by Rita Kernn-Larsen
Acquired in 2021 by the DIA, And Life Anew
is one of the only paintings by the Danish artist in an American museum collection today. The painting, part of the James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, is now on display (as of May 3) at the DIA.
Kernn-Larsens work remains largely unknown in the U.S., however, it was an American the art patron and dealer Peggy Guggenheim who provided her with one of the biggest breaks of her career. In 1938 the same year that Kernn-Larsen participated in the landmark International Surrealist Exhibition with Salvador Dalí and other notable artists Guggenheim gave her a major exhibition at her newly opened gallery in London. Kernn-Larsen and her future husband, Isaac Grünberg, traveled to London for the exhibition and stayed there due to the impending war. They remained in London until the end of World War II, and it was there, in 1940, that Kernn-Larsen painted And Life Anew
The formal similarities between the seated woman figure in the painting and Henry Moores remarkable Reclining Figure in the DIAs collection are striking. Kernn-Larsen participated in the Surrealism Today exhibition at Londons Zwemmer Gallery in June 1940, an exhibition where Moore presented his newly made elmwood Reclining Figure sculpture. It is possible that Kernn-Larsen painted And Life Anew
as both a celebration of her daughters birth as well as a response to Moores exceptional Reclining Figure, a work the latter artist described as his most important piece to date.
The acquisition of these remarkable works helps the DIA diversify its holdings of modern European art, and, more specifically, surrealist art, said Judith F. Dolkart, Deputy Director, Art, Education & Program at DIA. In our galleries, we are now able to tell a more comprehensive story about surrealismone that highlights the important contributions to the movement by women artists.
All four acquisitions further deepen the DIAs commitment to highlighting and collecting works of art by important women artists across all time periods and movements.
Current marquee exhibitions on view at the museum include By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 15001800, a groundbreaking exhibition exploring the untold stories of women artists in the male-dominated Italian art world of the 17th century, and Shield of the Nile Reflections, the first solo exhibition for legendary Detroit artist, teacher, and advocate Shirley Woodson, which has been featured on CBS Evening News, NPR, and NBC News.