Dora Maar
26 × 26 cm image
Further images
Exhibitions
NEED TO FIND OUT HOW TO READ WITHOUT having to subscribe:Forbidden-territories the Times
Forbidden-territories the Telegraph
Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes. 23 Nov 2024 - 21 April 2025
Forbidden Territories will mark 100 years of ‘Surrealism’, since its origins in 1924 with the publication of the ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ by the poet and critic André Breton. Surrealism has become one of the most influential artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the 20th Century, and continues to inspire artists working today.
This exhibition will take you on a journey through the fantastical terrains of Surrealism over 100 years, looking at how Surreal ideas can turn landscape into a metaphor for the unconscious, fuse the bodily with the botanical, and provide means to express political anxieties, gender constraints and freedoms. Trans-historical, thematic groupings of artwork will bring together artists of Breton’s circle from the 1920s, Salvador Dalí, Eileen Agar, Lee Miller and Max Ernst, among others, alongside later Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, Edith Rimmington, Marion Adnams, Conroy Maddox, Desmond Morris and more, and contemporary artists working within the legacy of Surrealism such as Shuvinai Ashoona, Stefanie Heinze, Helen Marten, Nicolas Party, and Wael Shawky.
Continuing to create conversations across the century, a final section will bring together new work by contemporary artists María Berrío and Ro Robertson alongside Surrealists Ithell Colquhoun and Dora Maar, to explore ideas of identity and autofiction within bodies of water.
A solo presentation of paintings and prints by Mary Wykeham will feature within the exhibition. This will be the largest public showing of Wykeham’s work since her solo show of 1949 at Galerie des Deux Îles, Paris, and marks the donation of a large group of works by this under-recognised Surrealist artist to The Hepworth Wakefield.
Literature
Frieze review, Frieze Magazine, exhibition review, 'Forbidden Territories', Lou Selfridge 20.12.2024"Nothing quite makes sense at first. Grey lines jut all over the place, gathering into tight clusters like manic cross-hatching. It takes a second or two to realize what you’re looking at: a craggy cliff face, viewed from a boat just offshore. Unlike other examples of Dora Maar’s work, Falaises (Cliffs, 1935) – which is currently on display in ‘Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes’ at The Hepworth Wakefield – has not been heavily edited. It really is just a cliff face, each fold and bulge of rock part of the natural landscape. Maar’s photograph suggests a radical way of looking at nature: her image shows the crag to be simultaneously real and surreal, a familiar geographical landmark that, if you zoom in on it, is also an unrecognizable, expressive constellation of lines, shapes and shadows. More than just a skilful photograph, Falaises is a way of looking, an invitation to experience the oddness of our world."
"Yet, despite Maar’s and Rimmington’s experimental photographs being squeezed into a room dominated by a large and lacklustre sculpture by Ro Robertson (Interlude II, 2024), a substantial section of the exhibition is given over to a solo presentation by Mary Wykeham, a British artist and poet whose work has rarely been shown."