Art in Focus: The ABCs of New York Surrealism in the 1930s with Lewis Kachur

Описание: September 21, 2021

Lewis C. Kachur
Professor of Art History, Kean University

Lewis will trace the initial New York reception of Parisian Surrealism from the early 1930s, with the recognition of Salvador Dalí’s painting and public persona as a key aspect. Pollock’s awareness of Dalí will be considered. Institutional backing for the movement, both in commercial galleries such as Julien Levy and Pierre Matisse and museums like the Wadsworth Atheneum and MoMA, played an important role in its reception. This interest acted as a beacon for the Surrealists who immigrated to New York during World War II.

A pioneer in the field of exhibition history and artists as curators, Lewis C. Kachur completed a study of fifty years of exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He is author of Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Surrealist Exhibition Installations (2001) and Robert Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings from the 1960s (2007). He is also co-author of Masterpieces of American Modernism from the Vilcek Collection (2013).

The Art in Focus Series is co-presented by the Stony Brook University Libraries and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. We would like to extend our thanks to the Herman Goldman Foundation and Stony Brook's John H. Marburger III Fund for supporting the series.