London International Surrealist Exhibition
Encyclopedia
The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from 11 June to 4 July 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The exhibition
Art exhibition
Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

 was organised by:
  • Hugh Sykes Davies
    Hugh Sykes Davies
    Hugh Sykes Davies was an English poet, novelist and communist who was one of a small group of 1930s British surrealists.Davies was born in Yorkshire to a Methodist minister and his wife. He went to Kingswood School, Bath and studied at Cambridge, where he co-edited a student magazine called...

  • David Gascoyne
    David Gascoyne
    David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

  • Humphrey Jennings
    Humphrey Jennings
    Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organization...

  • Rupert Lee
    Rupert Lee
    Rupert Lee was an English painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was one of the organisers of the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936....

  • Diana Brinton Lee
  • Henry Moore
    Henry Moore
    Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

  • Paul Nash
    Paul Nash (artist)
    Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, as well as a book-illustrator, writer and designer of applied art. He was the older brother of the artist John Nash.-Early life:...

  • Roland Penrose
    Roland Penrose
    Sir Roland Algernon Penrose CBE was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom.- Biography :...

  • Herbert Read
    Herbert Read
    Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

  • E. L. T. Mesens


The French organising committee were
  • André Breton
    André Breton
    André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

  • Paul Éluard
    Paul Éluard
    Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

  • Georges Hugnet
    Georges Hugnet
    Georges Hugnet , was a French poet, writer, artist, art historian, graphic artist, and film director. He was a figure in the Dada movement and Surrealism.-References:...

  • Man Ray
    Man Ray
    Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...



The exhibition was opened in the presence of about two thousand people by André Breton. The average attendance for the whole of the Exhibition was about a thousand people per day.

During the course of the Exhibition, the following lectures were delivered to large audiences:
  • June 16 — André Breton — Limites non Frontières du Surréalisme.
  • June 19 — Herbert Read — Art and the Unconscious.
  • June 24 — Paul Éluard — La Poésie Surréaliste.
  • June 26 — Hugh Sykes Davies — Biology and Surrealism.
  • July 1 — Salvador Dalí
    Salvador Dalí
    Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

    — Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques.


Dali's lecture was delivered whilst wearing a deep-sea diving suit. Nearly suffocating during the presentation, Dali had to be rescued by the young poet David Gascoyne, who arrived with a spanner to release him from the diving helmet.

Sources

  • International Surrealist Bulletin, Number 4, September 1936.
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