Sotheby’s Presents: Surrealism and its Legacy

Paris | 15 March

Dada and Surrealism transformed chaos into beauty, contradiction into poetry, darkness into imagery and the impossible into the possible. It was an avant-garde movement born from the ashes of the First World War. Surrealists didn’t try to invent the beauty of the world–they did the opposite, taking it as it was and exploring its many facets to find the beauty, joy, force, hope and humour that Classicism could not achieve. Surrealism is the disobedient wife of Blue Beard, who wants nothing more than to open the forbidden door. In today’s increasingly complex, contradictory and multipolar world, the legacy of Surrealism resonates more because it embraces these contradictions instead of resolving them.

The artistic legacy of Surrealism has never been more alive than it is today. In order to underline the importance of the movement’s legacy on post-war art and contemporary design and to open up the market to today's cross-category collectors, the sale also includes works by leading artists such as Fontana, Calder and Ruscha among others.

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