This exhibition inaugurated the Smart Museum of Art’s new Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery.
Featuring artists such as Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Man Ray, Kay Sage, and Dorothea Tanning, Surrealism in America showed the pervasive influence of European surrealism in America while demonstrating artists’ diverse responses to it. The early history of abstract expressionism, with surrealism as a catalyst, was explored through works by Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and others. Works by some European surrealists such as Max Ernst, Andre Masson, and Yves Tanguy, who fled to America during World War II, were also presented.