Mayo, Coups de Bâtons, 1937 © Mayo / Bildupphovsrätt 2018

Art et Liberté

Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)

28.4 2018 – 12.8 2018

Stockholm

See the first comprehensive museum exhibition about Art et Liberté, a surrealist collective of artists and writers working in Cairo. The group provided a restless generation of young artists, intellectuals and political activists with a heterogeneous platform for cultural and political reform.

The exhibition gives a comprehensive presentation of Art et Liberté (jama’at al-fann wal hurriyyah). Founded on December 22, 1938, upon the publication of their manifesto “Long Live Degenerate Art”, the group provided a restless generation of artists, intellectuals and political activists with a heterogeneous platform for cultural and political reform. At the dawn of the Second World War and during Egypt’s colonial rule by the British Empire, Art et Liberté was globally engaged in resistance against fascism, nationalism and colonialism.

International network of surrealists

Art et Liberté played an active role within an international network of surrealist writers and artists. With their own definition of surrealism, they achieved a contemporary literary and pictorial language that was as globally engaged as it was rooted in local artistic and political concerns.

The exhibition broadens our understanding of modernism at large by shedding new light on this largely unknown chapter of the surrealist movement. It features more than 200 artworks and archival documents.

Curators: Sam Bardaouil och Till Fellrath