André Masson Inside/Outside Surrealism: Works from the Gotlieb Collection

The American West has had an enormous influence on the course of American history, mythology, and popular culture. Traditionally, the region has been hailed as the terrain in which American values of progress triumphed against great odds. The magnificence of the western landscape and the high ideals of freedom and progress that galvanized Americans to settle there also drew numerous artists to document the perilous process of westward expansion. From its beginnings in the 1920s, André Masson (1896–1987) was a key figure in Surrealist art. He was a pioneer in the techniques of automatic drawing and biomorphic abstraction. Collaborating with Surrealist poets and theorists in their quest to subvert reason and investigate the workings of the human subconscious, he contributed illustrations to many important works of Surrealist literature. His fascination with metamorphosis in all its forms not only informed Surrealist thought, but provided the fuel for a lifetime of creativity. Masson’s complex, poetic and psychologically charged works comment on his struggle against Spanish fascism in the 1930s and his American exile from Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s. In the 1950s, he began to draw on Asian traditions and the Impressionism of Claude Monet and J. M. W. Turner. Masson’s boundless creativity is revealed by his experiments with printmaking techniques across the six decades of his artistic career.

André Masson Inside/Outside Surrealism: Works from the Gotlieb Collection presents a comprehensive collection of over ninety works by André Masson. Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian ambassador to the United States, carefully gathered only the finest impressions of Masson’s prints and illustrated books. Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, this is the first public exhibition of the Gotlieb collection. André Masson Inside/Outside Surrealism will have its premiere at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, and then will be shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario this summer.

The McMullen Museum will offer a series of public programs to accompany the exhibition, including readings from Surrealist literature, an evening of short Surrealist films, a concert of Modernist musical compositions, and a Surrealist games night.