Episode 3 - Dawn Ades: Surrealism in Latin America

In conversation with DA

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Dawn Ades

Dawn Ades is a world-renowned curator and authority on surrealism. She curated the landmark London exhibition Dada and Surrealism In 1978 and the Art in Latin America show in 1989 and was an advisor to the recent major exhibition Surrealism beyond Borders which was shown in New York (2021) and London (2022). In this conversation she begins by providing an outline of surrealism as a set of ideas and we then discuss its development in Latin America through the travels of André Breton and the Peruvian Cesar Moro, the arrival of various European artists in Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s such as  Benjamin Péret and Remedios Varo and how they linked up with great artists like Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera. We even discover that Trotsky and André Breton wrote the Manifesto for a Free and Revolutionary Art also signed by Rivera. The discussion then moves on to Brazil, where the influence of surrealism was felt through to the 1960s and 1970s in the work of sculptor Maria Martins and Helio Oiticica among others.  

The conversation mentions many people from many countries, and their names are listed here for your convenience.

Names in order of appearance 

  • André Breton  
  • Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude 
  • David Alfaro Siqueiros 
  • Aldo Pellegrini  
  • César Moro  
  • Minotaure  
  • Frida Kahlo  
  • Diego Rivera 
  • Trotsky 
  • Jacqueline Lamba 
  • Manuel Alvarez Bravo 
  • Dalí 
  • Magritte
  • Masson 
  • Wifredo Lam (Cuban-French artist) 
  • Wolfgang Paalen 
  • Agustín Lazo 
  • Aimé Césaire  
  • Suzanne Césaire   
  • Le Capitaine Paul Lemerle (ship) 
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss 
  • Victor Serge 
  • Benjamin Péret 
  • Manuel Gamio 
  • Antonin Artaud 
  • María Izquierdo 
  • Hector Hyppolite 
  • Michel Leyris 
  • Georges Bataille 
  • Roberto Matta 
  • Gordon Onslow Ford 
  • Leonora Carrington 
  • Para 
  • Benjamin Peret 
  • Gunther Gerszo 
  • Salvador Elizondo 
  • Roberto Bolaño 
  • Oswald de Andrade 
  • Maria Martins 
  • Anita Malfatti 

Bibliography

  • Ades, Dawn, Rita Eder, Graciela Speranza, and Dawn Ades. 2012a. Surrealism in Latin America : vivísimo muerto, edited by Dawn Ades, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. 
  • D'Alessandro, Stephanie, and Matthew Gale. 2021. Surrealism beyond borders (Exhibition catalogue), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
  • Surrealismo: vasos comunicantes (Exhibition, Museo Nacional de Arte, México) 
  • Dawn Ades: ‘Surrealism but not as you know it’, Tate Etc. Spring 2022 
  • Magazine: S.NOB  

Place names we couldn’t remember: 

  • Coyoacán – the Mexico City neighbourhood where Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky lived 
  • Fort-de-France capital of Martinique