Rare Surrealist books by Dalí, Breton and Ernst go on display in New York
New York’s Museum of Modern Art is showcasing rare artists’ books by Salvador Dalí, André Breton, Max Ernst and other leading figures of Surrealism, Qazinform News Agency reports.
According to the museum, The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors runs from October 4, 2026, through January 23, 2027. It examines how artists and writers transformed books into works of art through experiments with images, texts, materials and bindings.
The exhibition marks MoMA’s first presentation of works from the Helen and Sam Zell Collection, donated to the museum in 2022. The collection comprises approximately 100 works dating from 1857 to 2014, with a particular focus on Surrealism and its legacy.
Highlights include original manuscripts for Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto; Soluble Fish (1924), a private notebook filled with drawings of hybrid human and animal creatures by Unica Zürn, and unique bindings by Georges Hugnet incorporating materials such as liquid mercury and shattered glass.
Other works explore collaboration between artists and poets, including Dalí, Breton and Paul Éluard’s The Immaculate Conception (1930).
Photographic experiments range from Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s photomontages to Man Ray’s images accompanying Éluard’s poetry.
The exhibition also traces how books became instruments of resistance amid the rise of fascism and war in the late 1930s and 1940s. Publishers sought covert ways to distribute antiwar works, while private homes served as clandestine printshops.
Postwar works include Joan Miró’s illustrations for Éluard’s Proof Against All (1958), alongside books by a younger generation of artists and writers who adopted Surrealist techniques of collage, collaboration and chance.
“For the Surrealists, a book was like a door, a portal to a higher realm, where untold surprises and liberatory revelations await,” said Starr Figura, the museum’s senior curator and one of the exhibition’s organizers.
An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, examining the collection’s rare editions, unconventional materials and experimental formats.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that an exhibition dedicated to Kazakhstan’s Botai culture opened in Cambridge, marking its first presentation in Europe.