This article is the first in-depth examination of the Swedish artist Gudrun Åhlberg’s early career in the 1940s and 50s. Drawing on archival materials and the critical reception of the artist, the article details her approach to surrealism and her participation in the surrealist-oriented Imaginist Group alongside Max Walter Svanberg and other artists. Åhlberg’s art during these years was characterized by a figurative surrealism with frequent depictions of nature, often coupled with references to mediumism. The article situates these works in the context of surrealist art, poetics, and theory. More specifically, it places her paintings and gouaches in relation to her visit to the exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 in Paris and her concurrent discovery of the art of Victor Brauner. As a member of the Imaginist Group and a participant in the 1949 exhibition Surrealist Manifestation in Stockholm, Åhlberg was an important force in the renewal of surrealism that was taking place in Sweden at the time. But when she and her artist husband Gösta Kriland, a fellow imaginist, divorced in 1950, she was excluded from the continued activities of the group. The article discusses this exclusion in terms of a patriarchal dynamic.

In exile during World War II, André Breton sought a new myth intended to restore the severed human link with nature. In this chapter, we explore the interrelation in Breton’s thought of the 1940s between observation and documentation of nature and myth, in particular as informed by his experiences of nature in the Americas and his dialogue with Caribbean surrealists, including Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, and Wifredo Lam. Breton’s Arcane 17 (1944) notably links nature, poetry, and myth as antidotes to war and patriarchal culture, its manuscript illustrated with documentary photographs and found materials. Breton intimates that the universe is engaged in a generalised semiosis, in which animals and all other things interpret the world to make it meaningful. Through this view of a communicative world emerges the conditions for what we call an ecologue, between individuals, between locations, between cultures, between humanity and nature, but also within nature itself. 

Publicación que acompaña la exposición homónima entorno a la figura de Alan Glass, artista plástico canadiense vinculado al movimiento surrealista, que hizo de México su hogar hasta su muerte en enero de 2023. Con más de seis décadas de producción ininterrumpida, Glass destaca por su exploración con procesos y medios poco convencionales en los que desarrolló su vasta obra, entre la que sobresalen sus ensamblajes. Este catálogo incluye los ensayos de los especialistas Abigail Susik y Kristoffer Noheden, así como un texto curatorial a cargo de Xavier de la Riva y Joshua Sánchez, en los que se examinan las influencias artísticas, literarias y espirituales que nutrieron la obra del artista.