From Dada to Surrealism

In the early decades of the 20th century, the art world was taken by storm by the fearless experimentalism of several Jewish artists from Romania: Tristan Tzara (1895-1962), Victor Brauner (1903-1966), Marcel Janco (1895-1984), and M. H. Maxy (1895-1971).

They, and the older Romanian artist Arthur Segal (1875-1944), were present at the birth of an influential avant-garde movement. The younger artists Jules Perahim (1914-2008) and Paul Păun (1915-1994), inspired by their predecessors, were at the forefront of Surrealism.

Dadaist, Surrealist, abstract, and expressionistic works, personal variations on Constructivism – nothing went too far for them.

This virtual exhibition unveils some of the works in the unique exhibition From Dada to Surrealism: Jewish Avant-Garde Artists from Romania, 1910-1938 which ran in 2011 in the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam. The exhibition confirms the importance of Bucharest in European avant-garde art. Also, the lives and work of these seven men shed light on the relationship between Jewish identity and radical modernity.