CLASSICAL IDEALS AND SHATTERED ILLUSIONS

Surrealist imagery remarkably often features remnants of dream architecture and mysterious monuments. The Greco-Roman cultural heritage underpins Western civilisation. Sometimes as a symbol of eternal human values, and at others reflecting unattainable ideals for which people are prepared to step over dead bodies.

Few artists were as influential to the development of surrealism as Giorgio de Chirico. Moderna Museet’s painting "The Child’s Brain" from 1914 (currently on loan) was regarded by the surrealist leader and writer André Breton as the prototype for surrealist visual art.

After the surrealists had embraced de Chirico, he himself changed his focus and began painting with inspiration from the old masters. The horse as a mythical creature was a recurring motif, often painted among Greco-Roman ruins. The architecture and monuments of antiquity had a given place in de Chirico’s visual universe. The Italian painter was born in Greece and the classical heritage is tangible throughout his oeuvre.

Ancient Rome and Greece also attracted the emerging fascist movement in Europe. Italy’s leader Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Germany referred eagerly to the heyday of the Roman Empire. Hitler nurtured a dream of creating his own thousand-year Reich.

In Sweden in the late 1920s, Sven Jonson, Waldemar Lorentzon, Stellan Mörner, Axel Olson, Erik Olson and Esaias Thorén together formed the Halmstad group. Soon, they became involved in exchanges with artists in other countries, and their imagery reflects many of the subjects of international surrealism.

As Europe approached the Second World War, the Halmstad group’s motifs grew increasingly existential. In some of the paintings we see here, it is the wreckage of our own civilisation that fill the pictorial space, rather than ancient ruins.

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