The Hofstra University Museum of Art is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto with Les Visionnaires: In the Modernist Spirit, at Emily Lowe Gallery through July 26.
Featured artists in Les Visionnaires include Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró. Another artist who figures prominently in the exhibit is Françoise Gilot, who had a tumultuous, decade-long partnership with Picasso and is the mother of two of his children.
Gilot had a close association with Hofstra and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1982. She was an honorary conference chair of the 1985 Hofstra Cultural Center conference Toward a Reappraisal of Modernism, a program on avant-garde art and literature.
In 1988, the Hofstra Museum of Art hosted Françoise Gilot: An Artist’s Journey, 1945-1987. Furthermore, a percentage of sales from her solo exhibition at New York City’s Sutton Gallery were donated to benefit the Hofstra Cultural Center.
Planned in coordination with the 69th annual conference of the Society for French Historical Studies (March 14-16, 2024, at Hofstra), this interdisciplinary display of bookmaking, film, photography, pottery, printmaking, set design, and typography explores a variety of art movements and processes, including surrealism, dada, automatism, and spiritualism and honors the persisting influence of the French avant-garde.
Works are curated from the Museum’s permanent collection and the Howard L. and Muriel Weingrow Collection of Avant-Garde Art and Literature from Hofstra University Special Collections.
More than 4,000 original illustrated books, periodicals, exhibition catalogues, pamphlets, posters, letters, and original prints are part of the Weingrow Collection, representing nearly all major 20th century avant-garde movements.
The collection was donated to Hofstra University Special Collections in 1972. The Weingrow Collection, like the Museum’s permanent collection, provides research opportunities for students and academics.
Sasha Giordano, director of the Hofstra University Museum of Art and co-curator of the exhibit, said the Weingrow Collection highlights not only unique works but also the interconnectedness of visual artists and literary luminaries, like André Breton, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Tristan Tzara. “Artists worked together, lived together, created together, and loved each other. Their partnerships and collective approach captured the realities and hopes of modern society.”
Giordano’s co-curator on Les Visionnaires: In the Modernist Spirit is Kristen Dorata, assistant director of exhibitions and collections for the Hofstra University Museum of Art. Serving as guest historian and catalog essayist is Catherine E. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s associate professor of history and French studies and faculty director of the Programs in Digital Humanities.
Free public programs being held in conjunction with Les Visionnaires: In the Modernist Spirit include:
Film Screening: Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) (1946)
Wednesday, March 6, 5 p.m.
Directed by Jean Cocteau and featuring Jean Marais and Josette Day
93 min, English subtitles
Student Center Theater, Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center, North Campus
Moderated by Sally Charnow, PhD, chair, Department of History, Hofstra University
Followed by Q&A
RSVP to 516-463-5672.
Exhibition Tour
Tuesday, April 16, 5 p.m.
Emily Lowe Gallery, Behind Emily Lowe Hall, South Campus
Join Museum Director Sasha Giordano for a talk in the gallery about Les Visionnaires: In the Modernist Spirit.
The discussion will explore the political, economic, and cultural shifts that inspired a new forward-thinking attitude in artists who, in turn, discovered radical innovations in aesthetic forms, techniques, and content.
RSVP to 516-463-5672.
