IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism

FULL EXPERIENCE SURREALISM TICKET

Visit the exhibition IMAGINE! 100 years of International Surrealism AND the Magritte Museum with the new Full Experience Surrealism ticket!
Immerse yourself for a reduced price, in the surrealist world through Magritte’s masterpieces and extend your experience by visiting the exhibition IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism.

IMAGINE! 100 YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL SURREALISM

Each partner museum houses the core of the travelling exhibition and enriches it by emphasising its own heritage. In Brussels, the RMFAB will explore surrealism from a symbolist perspective, through more than 130 works of art (paintings, works on paper, sculptures, objects, assemblages, and photographs).

IMAGINE! focuses on the connections and similarities, but also the fracture lines between surrealism and symbolism, its precursor. From 1880 onwards, Brussels was an exceptional forum for the arts and the avant-garde, as demonstrated by the exhibitions of the circles ​“Les XX” and ​“La Libre Esthétique”. Symbolism, embodied in particular by Rops, Spilliaert, Khnopff, Delville and Minne, saw rapid development in Brussels and largely anticipated the emergence of the surrealist movement. A few decades later, Brussels became a centre for Belgian surrealism. Despite the cultural rupture caused by World War I, the older symbolists and the emerging youth were never fundamentally alienated from each other.

From January to July 2024, Belgium will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. What better year to celebrate surrealism, the movement which put Belgium on the map, and found meaning within a European context? What’s more, 2024 also marks the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the ​‘Surrealist Manifesto’ (1924). With IMAGINE!, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium wish to celebrate the centenary of the birth of surrealism in an optimal European context.

After Brussels and Paris, the exhibition will travel to the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Fundación Mapfré Madrid, before closing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Curated by :
- Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: Francisca Vandepitte, Curator of Modern Art
- Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’Art Moderne: Didier Ottinger, Deputy Director in charge of cultural programming at the Musée national d’Art moderne - Centre de création industrielle (MNAM/CCI) & Marie Sarré, Curatorial Attaché at the Modern Collections Department

In collaboration with the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Fundación Mapfré Madrid and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Partners : Bozar, La Loterie Nationale, La Banque Transatlantique Belge, Le Soir, La Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, Visit Brussels, Become a Friend, Belspo, La Première et La Trois.

The Brussels Card does not give free access to this exhibition.