The Rise of ‘Fantastic’ Exhibitions in Post-War Europe

Human faces emerge from the juicy flesh of fruit, fed by birds; tender lovers are enclosed with pearls inside a mussel shell or suspended within soap bubbles; massive drawbridges extend towards fortified gateways lost in shadow; gigantic birds with human legs devour sinners seated on latrine-thrones; witches’ sabbaths unfold around ritual goats… These are among the marvellous, delirious visions that populate the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Francisco de Goya: three of the greatest masters of fantastic art. In the aftermath of the Second World War, their work became the object of an extraordinary rediscovery, as it was increasingly exhibited alongside those of contemporary artists – many of them were linked to Surrealism – who shared related imaginative and thematic concerns. As the French critic Georges Charensol noted in the Revue des Deux Mondes in June 1957, Europe was witnessing a veritable ‘fashion for the fantastic’, a trend that had already been capturing the enthusiasm of art lovers for several years.1

The present article investigates the emergence and dissemination of exhibitions devoted to fantastic art in post-war Europe. Drawing on contemporary observations, such as that of Charensol, this study seeks to understand how and why this mode of exhibition gained prominence across the continent. By reconstructing and analysing institutional exhibitions held between 1952 and 1957, the article situates them within broader cultural, historiographical, and institutional frameworks to illuminate the rise of this trend. In this context, the landmark 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, organised by Alfred H. Barr Jr. at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, constitutes a significant precedent against which European post-war receptions are examined, and which has recently been the subject of the first study supported by the Surrealism Grant, conducted by Wilko Ruijter.

Before proceeding, a crucial distinction requires clarification: the focus of this article is the ‘fantastic’ rather than ‘Surrealism’. While Surrealism emerged as an avant-garde movement in Paris in 1924 with the first surrealist manifesto of André Breton, seeking to articulate a higher reality through the irrational and the psyche, the fantastic is not a movement but an enduring aesthetic category, a constant in art since its origins. As Barr himself noted in 1936, the fantastic, the spontaneous, and the marvellous constitute one of humanity’s most profound and enduring concerns, while also distinguishing between the fantastic and Surrealism: whereas many fantastic works of the past rest on rational grounds, Surrealist practice is rooted in the unconscious.2 Consequently, this article traces the trajectory of the ‘fantastic’ as a category that was mobilised, circulated, and interpreted across different contexts, at times converging with or diverging from Surrealist practice.3

The significance of this study lies in its reassessment of these overlooked initiatives. By reading them as a coherent tendency on a European scale, the article argues that these exhibitions played a meaningful role within the cultural landscape of the post-war years. Far from being peripheral, the fantastic emerges here as a symbolic language through which Europe sought to confront the trauma of the recent past and to reimagine its cultural and imaginative horizons.

The exhibition comprised approximately 250 drawings and paintings and a much smaller number of sculptures, around twenty-six in total. The only surviving photographic record of the display is a view of Room 6, dedicated to Max Ernst, which suggests that the layout was likely subdivided by artist or movement (fig. 2). In this photographic reproduction, Ernst’s paintings are arranged across two walls, aligned with one another at the bottom, apart from the smallest one. At the centre of the room, Germaine Richier’s plaster Chauve-souris (1952) appears to strain desperately, as if in a cry, attempting to break free and take flight. Among the paintings on the walls, it is possible to identify, from right to left: Großes Sonnenrad (1927), L'homme, l'ennemi de la femme ou l'homme, le meilleur ami de la femme (1927), Cinq jeunes filles et un homme traversant une rivière (1928), Composition (1930), and finally the barely visible fragment Composition (1929). These are all oils on canvas; the first four were owned at the time by a private collection in Pratteln, a city in Switzerland, while the 1929 composition (also known as Fleurs de coquillage) belongs to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. Further loans were secured from the Kunstmuseum in Basel, various galleries, and numerous private collectors in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. It is also interesting to note that some of the works were for sale, and their prices were listed in the catalogue. For example, among Ernst’s paintings was a canvas titled Ils sont restés trop longtemps dans la forêt (1926), for which no provenance is given, priced at 2,500 Swiss francs.10

Alongside Ernst and De Chirico, the exhibition presented many well-known figures from the European artistic scene, including Jean (Hans) Arp, René Magritte, Joan Miró and Giorgio Morandi. Yet one of the most distinctive features of the exhibition was the organising committee’s decision to include a dozen artists from Basel, thereby creating a bridge between international Surrealism and the local artistic milieu. Among them, Moeschlin occupied a prominent place, and he was also entrusted, together with Plüss and Leuthardt, with the organisation of the exhibition.

Moeschlin was also the author of the third text in the catalogue, in which he offered several reflections on Surrealism. Particularly striking from today’s perspective is the fact that his essay is structured around the hostility with which the movement was received. As he himself observed, ‘probably none of the art movements mainly represented in the exhibition “Fantastic Art” has ever been as widely reviled as the one known as “Surrealism”; for its opponents include not only art lovers attached to tradition, but also a broad section of the camp of modernism’s advocates themselves.' Moeschlin went on to explain that such criticism focused above all on the uninhibited nature of Surrealist artists, both in their choice of iconographic subjects and in the expressive means they employed, which led some observers to label these works as a form of naturalistic kitsch.11 Considering these positions, and probably aware of the reservations that an exhibition devoted to Surrealism might provoke in Basel, director Stoll felt it necessary to clarify that the exhibition was not intended as propaganda for any of the movements represented, Surrealism included. Rather, its aim was to offer an overview of artistic research undertaken both abroad and within the Basel context.12

This widespread disamore marks the post-war reception of Surrealism not only in Switzerland but also in Italy.13 In both countries, the movement continued to arouse distrust and resistance, which tangibly affected the manner of its public presentation. As will be discussed in the following chapter, these tensions would have significant consequences even in the Italian context, helping to significantly shape the debate and the curatorial choices that would lead to the 1954 Biennale in Venice.

Founded in 1895 in continuity with the tradition of nineteenth-century international exhibitions, the Venice Biennale soon became one of the most influential platforms in the international exhibition landscape and a model that would later be followed by other large-scale events, such as the São Paulo Biennial (first held in 1951) and the Paris Biennale (since 1959). Organised around the Palazzo Centrale and the national pavilions in Castello’s gardens, the event brought together exhibitions curated by the Biennale’s central bodies and national presentations overseen by individual commissioners.

After a six-year interruption during the Second World War, the Biennale reopened in 1948 under the direction of art historian Rodolfo Pallucchini, Secretary General until 1954, who was entrusted with relaunching the institution within a renewed international and cultural framework. Drawing on the original mission of the exhibition, Pallucchini placed particular emphasis on large retrospective surveys devoted to major artists and movements of the modern European avant-gardes, conceived both as instruments of historical reassessment and as a means of reconnecting Italian audiences with artistic developments that had been marginalised during the Fascist period. Beginning with the major Impressionism exhibition in 1948, successive editions addressed Cubism, Futurism, Abstraction and Expressionism, a programme of historical re-examination that culminated in 1954 with the decision to dedicate a major presentation to Surrealism.

The idea of a Surrealist exhibition emerged in the summer of 1952, when the international committee responsible for the historical exhibitions of the 27th Venice Biennale met under the chair of Pallucchini. The committee was composed of prominent critics and museum professionals: Giulio Carlo Argan, Otto Benesch, Raymond Cogniat, Paul Fierens, Pericle Fazzini, Giuseppe Fiocco, Eberhard Hanfstaengl, Max Huggler, Willem Sandberg, Gino Severini and James Thrall Soby. It initially proposed an exhibition structured in several sections: a group of Surrealist forerunners, including Johann Heinrich Füssli, William Blake, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon and Félicien Rops; a room devoted to Dada; and further rooms presenting the principal exponents of Surrealism.14 This scheme aimed to situate the movement within a longer historical trajectory, linking it to Symbolist antecedents and to Dada. While the committee’s proposals appear to privilege nineteenth-century precedents, without extending to earlier figures such as Bosch or Giuseppe Arcimboldo, as had been the case in Barr’s 1936 exhibition, the recurring use of the term ‘forerunners’ in correspondence and meeting minutes nonetheless points to an intention to historicise Surrealism, albeit within a more limited chronological framework.

Although the project initially received favourable responses from committee members, it soon encountered significant resistance within the Italian critical milieu. The writer Antonio Petrucci, for instance, openly questioned the legitimacy of Surrealism as a visual movement, describing it as essentially literary lacking a coherent visual framework and a clearly defined pictorial identity.15 By the summer of 1953 growing critical opposition led Pallucchini to reconsider the original plan. The project was reduced and reoriented towards a limited number of major figures, while national commissioners were invited to present Surrealist works within their respective pavilions. The invitation addressed by Pallucchini to the national commissioners radically transformed the exhibition’s framework, conferring upon it a distinctive character. Rather than being confined to a single section, as had been the case for the other historical exhibitions, the retrospective took the form of a dispersed exhibition, spread across the national pavilions. While officially justified by the international character of the movement and by the lack of available space, this arrangement also reflected the climate of suspicion surrounding Surrealism in Italy. In fact, Surrealism was frequently perceived as extraneous to the national figurative tradition, and its engagement with the unconscious, often regarded as difficult to regulate and potentially destabilising, raised fears that a large-scale exhibition might prove ideologically and morally problematic.

Correspondence from the period reveals that some critics did not simply express reservations but actively distanced themselves from the initiative: in another letter to Pallucchini, Petrucci emphasised that he had never viewed a Surrealist exhibition favourably, remarking that the decision to enlarge the space allocated to Italian artists had effectively spared the Biennale such an undertaking.16 Even more revealing is the position taken by Argan, who described the other historical retrospectives organised by the committee – most notably was the exhibition devoted to Gustave Courbet, which he himself had advocated – as ‘antidote exhibitions’ to the Surrealist one.17 Just as Stoll had done two years earlier, in the catalogue of the 27th Biennale Pallucchini explicitly addressed such anxieties, insisting that the Biennale’s retrospectives of historically delimited movements were not intended to foster nostalgia.18

Following these organisational debates and Pallucchini’s efforts to address critics’ anxieties, the 27th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale opened on 19 June 1954. Within the forty-seven rooms of the Palazzo Centrale, only three were devoted to major figures of Surrealism: Room XLV to Arp, Room XLVI to Miró, and Room XLVII to Ernst (fig. 3). Curated by Umbro Apollonio and Adriana Albini, these retrospectives nonetheless occupied a marginal position at the eastern end of the pavilion, away from the central nucleus organised around the circular hall. All three artists received major awards but, as advisor Roberto Longhi observed, their rooms remained conspicuously empty even during the opening days, a situation he attributed in part to the limited accessibility of such artists for a broader public.19

In addition to these retrospectives, nine of the participating nations responded to Pallucchini’s invitation to present Surrealist works within their own pavilions: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Spain, the United States and South Africa (fig. 4). In the Austrian Pavilion, the commissioner Josef Hoffmann presented a younger generation influenced by the achievements of the 1920s, identifying Albert Paris Gütersloh as a precursor and exhibiting artists such as Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Heinz Leinfellner, three artists whose names Pallucchini himself had specifically suggested to the Austrian commissioner.20 The Belgian Pavilion, curated by Emile Langui, offered a historical survey of fantastic art from Bosch to Magritte, presenting Magritte and Paul Delvaux as the leading figures of Belgian Surrealism. In the French Pavilion, the commissioner Cogniat allotted only a limited space to Surrealism within a broader display divided into sections such as The Fauves, Fantastic Art and Abstract Art. The artists Cogniat selected to represent fantastic art were Victor Brauner, Jean Carzou, Lucien Coutaud, Edouard Goerg, Félix Labisse, and André Masson.

The German Pavilion, organised by Hanfstaengl, combined retrospectives of Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer with a section, requested by Pallucchini, devoted to living artists associated with Surrealist poetics, including Edgar Ende and Mac Zimmermann.21 Other national responses ranged from the section on Francis Bacon  in the British Pavilion, curated by Philip Hendy, to the Greek Pavilion entirely dedicated to Nikos Engonopoulos. Spain placed Salvador Dalí at the centre of its presentation, organised by the Marquis of Lozoya, while a larger Dalí retrospective was simultaneously staged at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, presenting works recently shown in Rome at the Palazzo Rospigliosi. The United States Pavilion, curated by René d’Harnoncourt and Porter A. McCray, included exhibitions devoted to Ben Shahn and Willem de Kooning, while the South African section, organised by Matthys Bokhorst within the Palazzo Centrale, presented artists close to Surrealist sensibilities such as Alexis Preller. Italy, for its part, contributed with an exhibition devoted to Alberto Savinio in Room XVIII of the Central Pavilion, curated by Libero de Libero.

Although Pallucchini occasionally suggests artists to national commissioners, the decision by Langui and Cogniat to foreground the category of the fantastic appears to have been entirely their own. Their correspondence with the Secretary General did not elaborate on this choice, though both emphasised that it allowed greater latitude in the selection of artists.22 Pallucchini accepted these proposals and, in a subsequent letter to the Marquis of Lozoya, highlighted fantastic art as a principal theme of that year’s Venice Biennale.23 In pursuing the fantastic, neither commissioner made explicit reference to the 1936 exhibition. The sole mention of Barr’s exhibition appears in a letter sent by Thrall Soby to Pallucchini in November 1953, in which he cited the 1947 catalogue edition while proposing the inclusion of Joseph Cornell in the United States Pavilion.24

The absence of direct references to Barr, does not imply a lack of influence. Rather, the category of the fantastic enabled Langui and Cogniat to situate Surrealism within a broader, more flexible framework. Langui used it in the Belgian Pavilion to justify a wider selection of artists and to frame Surrealism within a longer national tradition.25 In doing so, he adopted an exceptional curatorial strategy for the Biennale, bringing into an exhibition institutionally devoted to contemporary art works from earlier centuries, extending back as far as the sixteenth century. By contrast, Cogniat used the same category to broaden the scope of the historical Surrealist group of the 1920s, incorporating younger artists or those outside the original movement who nonetheless shared its sensibility.26

In Italy, where Surrealism faced scepticism, this strategy produced partly unintended consequences. The emphasis on the fantastic, tented to divert attention from Surrealism itself, weakening the exhibition’s coherence. Contemporary reviews reflected this: Alberto Neppi lamented the dispersion of Surrealist works across pavilions and criticised the Belgian presentation for extending into retrospective zones of dream, the macabre and the grotesque that obscured the features of contemporary Surrealism,27 while Giuseppe Sciortino noted that the leitmotif of the Biennale should have been Surrealism, yet appeared evanescent or approximate.28

Another factor contributing to the limited success of the 1954 exhibition, as highlighted by the press, was Pallucchini’s deliberate curatorial strategy of distributing Surrealist works across the Biennale rather than presenting them in a concentrated format, as was customary for retrospectives of Impressionism and other historical avant-gardes. His correspondence and catalogue introduction reveal an explicit reference to a ‘theme’, Surrealism itself, taken up by several nations.29 Although the 1954 Biennale cannot be defined as a thematic Biennale in the contemporary sense, structured around a single title capable of guiding the entire curatorial project, it may nonetheless be read as an early and significant precedent in the history of the Biennales: a moment in which the notion of a theme emerged, anticipating developments that would become central only in later decades.

The exhibition held in Ostend reflected a broad investigative model, expansive in both chronological and geographical scope. With the 1954 Venice Biennale, Langui reworked this approach into a more focused enquiry centred on the Flemish tradition. In doing so, he recalibrated the wide-ranging survey of Western fantastic art presented in Ostend and bringing his curatorial narrative into closer alignment with the interpretative framework advanced by Fierens, who served both on the honorary committee of the Ostend exhibition and on the international committee of experts of the 1954 Venice Biennale.

At first glance, the catalogue of the Belgian Pavilion might suggest that the 1954 exhibition largely replicated the 1953 show, given the shared theme, comparable scale (just over one hundred works in each case) and similar four-part structure: early paintings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, contemporary paintings, engravings and, in place of artists’ books, sculpture.34 Closer analysis, however, reveals a more focused approach: artists previously associated with the fantastic were reduced to a core group making room for figures tied to the national tradition, often little known internationally, such as Roelant Savery, Antoine Wiertz, Fernand Khnopff, Louis Van Lint, and Suzanne Van Damme. Even when names coincided between the two editions, the works were largely renewed: only around ten pieces appeared on both occasions, including Bosch’s Bruges triptych of the Last Judgement (c. 1500, fig. 6) and a Temptation of St Anthony by Huys (undated), La mise au tombeau (1951) by Delvaux, three paintings by Magritte, three engravings by Bruegel, one by Jan Wellens de Cock and A Horse (c. 1520/30) by Frans Crabbe van Espleghem, borrowed from the Museum Boymans in Rotterdam (fig. 7).

For the 1954 Venice Biennale, Langui’s curatorial model was less a continuation of Barr or any other exhibition precedent than a framework shaped by literary and critical concerns, primarily influenced by Fierens’ Le fantastique dans l’art flamand (Brussels 1947), itself rooted in earlier reflections by Maeterlinck. This influence is evident both in the choice of artists and in the conceptualisation of a continuous line of the fantastique, extending from early masters such as Bosch and Bruegel,35 through Teniers and Ensor, to contemporary figures including Magritte and Delvaux. Following Fierens' argument, Langui maintained that the art of the Low Countries from the sixteenth century onwards was defined by a dialectical tension between realism – rooted in a northern temperament oriented towards meticulous observation and the representation of the tangible – and an irrepressible drive towards the fantastic, which he identified as a constant in this tradition, ‘equally important, equally glorious’ (fig. 8). This irrational component was not, however, a merely atavistic trait. Rather, Langui grounded it in the historical experience of the nation itself. One could not, he argued, plough with impunity the ‘age-old battlefield of Europe’, nor endure centuries of foreign occupation and moral upheaval, without the spirit, in reaction, turning away from logic and the tangible and seeking refuge in the fantastic (fig. 9).36 From this perspective, the inclusion of old masters within an exhibition of contemporary art was not an antiquarian appendix. On the contrary, it constituted a deliberate act of historicisation, intended to demonstrate that the works of Delvaux and Magritte were the outcome of a centuries-long trajectory. This connection between Langui’s presentation and Fierens’ theories was further reinforced by a special 1954 issue of Les Arts Plastiques, produced on the occasion of the Biennale as a guide for the public to the Belgian Pavilion. In this issue, the pavilion’s introductory text was presented alongside a text by Fierens, composed largely of extracts from his 1947 volume, thereby establishing an explicit dialogue between Langui’s curatorial choices and Fierens’ critical framework.37

Subsequently, in 1962, Langui participated as a member of the patronage committee in the exhibition Le fantastique dans l’art flamand au XVIe siècle at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp, presented on the occasion of the Third International Congress of Psychopathological Art, marking a continuation of his curatorial engagement with the history of the fantastic.

A year after the Venice Biennale, on 23 July 1955, another exhibition dedicated to fantastic art opened, this time in Germany, in Leverkusen, near Cologne (fig. 10). Organised by Curt Schweicher at the Museum Morsbroich, where he had served as director since its foundation in 1951, the exhibition was fully integrated into the director's curatorial programme. This programme on the one hand privileged artists and artistic associations from the Rhineland, while on the other aimed to bring international artistic expressions to Leverkusen, as demonstrated by the earlier exhibitions Schweizer Graphik der Gegenwart (1951), Englische Lithos und Monotypien (1953) and Das neue Bauen in Holland (1953). Fantastische Basler Malerei fitted naturally within this framework by presenting painters active in Basel. The exhibition was the result of a collaboration between Schweicher and the director of the Kunstmuseum Basel, Georg Schmidt, who had also served on the honorary committee of the 1953 exhibition in Ostend. As Schmidt recounts in the catalogue, the exhibition was born from a visit by Schweicher to Basel in April, intended to assess the possibility of organising an exhibition dedicated to the Basel Surrealist Walter Kurt Wiemken (fig. 11) and other Swiss Surrealists. Schmidt continues by explaining that ‘this conversation was followed by a tour of our gallery and our storage facilities – and then, mentally, the exhibition was already complete, just as it appears today!’.38

For the exhibition Fantastische Basler Malerei, 86 works including paintings, watercolours and prints by eight Basel artists were presented in Germany: Wiemken, Moeschlin, Otto Abt, Marguerite Ammann, Valerie Heussler, Max Kaempft, Hans R. Schiess and Irene Zurkinden. The exhibition was therefore limited to pictorial works: no sculptures, photographs, or objects of any other nature were presented, and the selection was further restricted to contemporary artists. It is significant, particularly given the chronological period, that three women were among the featured artists: Ammann, Heussler, and Zurkinden. Most of the exhibited works were, naturally, on loan from the Kunstmuseum Basel, but loans were also included from private collections, the Staatlicher Kunstkredit of Basel and the Basler Kunstverein. Some works were also intended for sale, and Schmidt purchased three paintings by Heussler on that occasion, which were added to the Kunstmuseum collection, including Vulcano (1952).

None of the artists presented in Leverkusen by Schweicher and Schmidt had appeared in the previous exhibitions dedicated to fantastic art in Ostend, Venice, or New York. Five of these names had, however, already been brought together by the Basler Kunstverein committee in the exhibition organised at the Kunsthalle in 1952. The latter in all probability constituted a direct precedent for the German exhibition, which can be read as a new and more targeted focus on the Basel artistic scene. Serving as an intermediary between the two initiatives was likely Moeschlin, a member of the Basler Kunstverein and among the artists present at the Kunsthalle in 1952, whose organizational contribution was explicitly acknowledged by Schweicher in the catalogue.39 The institutional link appears further strengthened by the fact that some of the works exhibited in Leverkusen came directly from the collection of the Basler Kunstverein, suggesting a continuity not only of artists but also of exhibition and loan circuits. It is therefore unsurprising that, in his introduction to the catalogue, Schweicher expressed strong admiration for the exhibition activities of the Kunsthalle, acknowledging its merit in having contributed decisively to the vitality of the city's artistic environment. Significantly, the catalogue offered no explicit explanation for the use of the term ‘fantastic’, likely shaped in relation to the 1952 Basel exhibition and the 1953 Ostend show, with which Schmidt was closely familiar.

Schmidt’s catalogue contribution highlighted Basel’s exceptional role in fostering Surrealism. Although Switzerland was generally considered ‘unfavourable’ to the movement, Basel’s intellectual and rationalist traditions – alongside Arnold Böcklin’s visionary painting, Jacob Burckhardt’s thought, and the fantastical Basel Carnival – provided a fertile environment in which artists, including those shown in Leverkusen, could engage with the unconscious and address contemporary tensions.40

‘Mr Chaban-Delmas, Mayor of Bordeaux, gave fifteen hundred people nightmares last night. After the performance of Lulli’s “Artemide” at the Grand Théâtre, which officially marked the opening of the Bordeaux Festival, he took his guests to see the four hundred works in the exhibition dedicated to Bosch, Goya and the fantastic at the Palais des Beaux-Arts by candlelight’, wrote journalist Jean-Paul Crespelle in the pages of France-Soir, recalling the opening evening of the exhibition Bosch, Goya et le fantastique, held from 20 May to 31 July 1957 (fig. 12).41 ‘The guests felt a chill down their spines’, he continued. His report also offers evocative details of the carefully orchestrated atmosphere awaiting visitors at the entrance. On the threshold stood a large tree inhabited by bats, crabs and chimpanzee skeletons borrowed from the Natural History Museum; beyond it, the walls appeared densely covered with painted monsters, devils and demons.

These creatures inhabited every floor of the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, one of the museum’s exhibition spaces used during the city’s music festival to host art exhibitions.42 Press reviews from the period allow the display to be reconstructed with some precision. Drawings and prints were shown on the ground floor; the first floor was devoted to early painting, while the basement spaces housed works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The exhibition route also included a section of manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, another devoted to the fantastic in photography, and a last section dedicated to psychopathological art. The works were arranged chronologically and by school, to highlight the principal phases of the monstrous, magic, dream and madness in the history of Western art.

As Crespelle himself recalls, the exhibition took place on the Mai musical, the festival that had animated the city of Bordeaux annually since 1951 under the direction of Gilberte Martin-Méry. At the time curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts – in 1959 she would become director, succeeding Jean-Gabriel Lemoine – Martin-Méry was responsible for both the organisation of the exhibition and the editing of the catalogue.

The survey dedicated to the fantastic was the seventh in a series of exhibitions on European art inaugurated in 1951. As Martin-Méry herself stated during the press conference, it was also part of a broader programme devoted to Goya, who had lived in Bordeaux from 1824 until his death in 1828. This focus is evident in earlier exhibitions, including Goya: 1746-1828, organised for the first edition of the Mai musical, and De Tiepolo à Goya, held in 1956. Goya remained central to the 1957 project, inspiring the organisers to frame the subject as ‘the fantastic before Goya and the fantastic after Goya’.43

Despite such a programmatic role, only two small canvases by the artist featured in the exhibition: Scène des caprices (c. 1815) and Scène de sorcellerie (1798). The latter, depicting a witches’ sabbaths unfold around ritual goat, constituted one of the most prominent pieces and was chosen both for the poster and for the cover of the catalogue (fig. 13). Other testimonies of Goya’s production consisted primarily of works on paper: etchings, watercolours, inks, and sanguine drawings (fig. 14).

On the other hand, Bosch, the other major figure named in the exhibition title, was represented by only five works. This limitation was likely due to the increasing difficulty of securing loans of panel paintings, as noted by Martin-Méry during the press conference.44 Only two panel paintings were included: Ship of Fools (c. 1510/16) and a Temptation of Saint Anthony (undated), now considered a workshop production and held at the Gemäldegalerie. They were shown alongside The Trials of Job (1514), attributed to the artist’s workshop and formerly in the collection of Max de Coninck, originally on panel but later transferred to canvas, and two engravings: another Temptation of Saint Anthony (1561) and Last Judgement (undated), whose triptych version had previously been shown by Langui in Ostend and Venice.

Contemporary reviews often warned visitors not to expect a display of exceptional masterpieces, emphasising instead that the interest of the exhibition laid in the overall assembly of the works.45 With nearly four hundred works, the Bordeaux exhibition was indeed configured as the widest retrospective on fantastic art organised in post-war Europe, covering a chronological arc from the sixteenth century to contemporary Surrealist expressions.

As in other instances, the retrospective organised by Barr provided a clear point of reference for both the structure of the exhibition and the selection of artists. Its catalogue is cited twice in the bibliography: in the section devoted to Surrealism and in that relating to psychopathological art, presented here for the first time in France in a national museum.46 The New York precedent likely also influenced the decision to include works by psychiatric patients, introduced in the catalogue by an extensive essay by Dr Robert Volmat. Unlike the 1936 exhibition, where such works had been presented separately and without attribution, the Bordeaux catalogue took care to record the author, technique, dating, provenance, bibliography, exhibitions, and a brief description, according to the same criteria adopted for the other works. Similarly, to Barr, furthermore, Martin-Méry interpreted Surrealism as the latest development of a long fascination with the fantastic, whose origins were traced back to the sixteenth century. Numerous artists overlapped between the two exhibitions. In the section devoted to earlier art, where Martin-Méry placed Bosch and Goya, figures such as Baldung Grien, Albrecht Dürer, Füssli, Alessandro Magnasco and Piranesi were included. In the section on nineteenth and twentieth-century art, the selection encompassed, among others, Rodolphe Bresdin, Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Leonor Fini and Miró.

At the same time, a substantial number of artists had not been associated with the fantastic by Barr and were instead introduced by Martin-Méry. In the section devoted to the old masters, French artists were notably scarce, limited to Pierre Brebiette and Claude Gillot, an absence that did not go unnoticed in contemporary accounts.47 Many artists in this section were instead from the Low Countries. However, only a small proportion corresponded to the earlier selection made by Langui; Martin-Méry introduced, among others, Gillis van Coninxloo, Kerstiaen de Keuninck and Cornelis de Vos. While it is uncertain whether she was familiar with the Ostend exhibition or the Belgian presentation at the 1954 Venice Biennale, she clearly knew the text by Fierens of 1947, which is cited in the bibliography.48 Moreover, several works presented by Martin-Méry had previously been included in Fierens’ publication to support his thesis, including Bosch (Ship of Fools, c. 1515/16), Huys (Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1547), Ensor (Squelettes voulant se chauffer, 1895) and Delvaux (Les squelettes, 1944).

Concerning the contemporary section, similarly to Langui’s exhibitions, there is no reference in the catalogue about Basel’s exhibitions or artists. Organised in relatively peripheral artistic centres, Ostend, Leverkusen and Basel, these earlier initiatives may not have achieved significant international visibility. By contrast, French and Spanish artists formed the core of Martin-Méry’s contemporary proposal. She was clearly familiar with the presentation of the fantastic curated by Cogniat at the 1954 Venice Biennale: the exhibition appears in the bibliography, several of the artists he selected were included in Bordeaux, and Cogniat himself was among the invited guests at the opening.49

The strong presence of Spanish artists in this section, including Leonardo Alenza y Nieto, Eugenio Lucas and Eugenio Lucas Villamil, was therefore no coincidence. Spanish cultural institutions were among the principal lenders to the exhibition. In particular, the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid played a central role, extending well beyond the provision of loans. In fact, the exhibition was developed in close dialogue between the Bordeaux museum and the Spanish foundation, whose director was also invited to contribute an essay to the catalogue on the fantastic in Spanish art.50

Among the contributions in the catalogue, the essay by the art historian Hermann Voss, former director of the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, is particularly significant, as it focuses on the meaning attributed to the term ‘fantastic’ within the context of the exhibition. Comparing the Bordeaux exhibition with the Mostra del Demoniaco nell’arte, organised in Rome in 1952, he emphasised the importance of the choice of a deliberately neutral and objective term. The use of the category of the ‘fantastic’, Voss explained, did not indeed imply any moral judgement on the works presented: far from reproaching artists for the creation of nihilistic or sometimes diabolical images, the exhibition intended rather to affirm that ‘it is believed that complete freedom of creative imagination is a fundamental right of the creative artist’.51

Bosch, Goya et le fantastique was clearly situated within the European perspective that, from 1951, characterised the series of exhibitions devoted to the art of the continent organised in Bordeaux for the Mai musical. This international dimension was underpinned by an extensive network of institutional collaborations, ranging from loans provided by numerous European museums, including, beyond Spanish institutions, major collections such as the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the Alte Pinakothek, the Museo Correr, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, to catalogue contributions by scholars of various nationalities. Far beyond a mere display of artworks, the exhibition operated as a strategic platform for cultural representation at a European scale. This ambition is further attested by archival evidence, including invitations sent to multiple European embassies in Paris, soliciting their participation in the opening evening.52 It is no coincidence that in June 1957, Bordeaux was awarded the Europe Prize, alongside Turin, at The Hague. Established in 1955 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, this recognition was granted to municipalities that excelled in promoting the European ideal, effectively crowning the local authorities' efforts in fostering cultural exchanges and strengthening cooperation across the continent.

This study has traced the emergence of exhibitions devoted to fantastic art across 1950s Europe, from Basel to Venice, Ostend, Leverkusen, and Bordeaux. These exhibitions were considered in relation to their cultural and institutional context, the individuals involved, and the selected artists. Where the catalogue texts permitted, the use of the category of the fantastic and the critical frameworks constructed around it were also examined, including connections to the 1936 exhibition at the MoMA. Contemporary press reception was addressed where available, although the scarcity of photographic documentation, apart from the room dedicated to Ernst in the 1952 exhibition, has precluded a detailed analysis of display strategies.

The examination of these exhibitions has revealed that, although not systematic or coordinated, an interest in the fantastic did indeed emerge in post-war Europe. The present study has nevertheless focused on a limited group of exhibitions explicitly devoted to this category, primarily those supported by substantial institutional documentation. Other initiatives, not analysed here but indicative of the phenomenon’s wider diffusion, included Französische Phantastik (Albertina, Vienna, 1946), Exposición de arte fantástico (Clan Gallery, Madrid, 1953), and Het Fantastische in de Prentkunst (Museum Boymans, Rotterdam, 1956). Similarly, numerous exhibitions employing related categories, such as the Mostra del demoniaco, held in 1952 at Palazzo Barberini in Rome and cited by Voss in the Bordeaux catalogue, fall within the same cultural horizon. The persistence of this interest beyond the 1950s was also evidenced by subsequent exhibitions, including Arte fantastica italiana (Galleria Schwarz, Milan, 1960) and the show Surrealismo e arte fantastica, presented on the VIII São Paulo Biennale in 1965. From this perspective, further research could explore both the role of the commercial sphere and the analysis of postwar publications devoted to the fantastic, useful for contextualising the theoretical reflections presented in catalogues by authors such as Langui or Plüss. Examples in this field include Fierens’ Le fantastique dans l’art flamand (Brussels, 1947), Marcel Brion’s Art fantastique (Paris, 1961) and studies on the medieval fantastic published by Jurgis Baltrušaitis in 1955 and 1960, volumes that were also notably present in Pallucchini’s library.

The theoretical reflections developed in the exhibition catalogues indicate that the category of the fantastic followed two main directions, both rooted in or connected to Surrealism. On one hand, it was viewed as a culmination, or significant stage, of a tradition extending back through previous centuries, as in the exhibitions curated by Langui and Martin-Méry. On the other, it served to encompass a broader group of contemporary artists, not always strictly surrealist but sharing ideological or thematic affinities, as seen in the presentation of the French pavilion at the 1954 Biennale and in the exhibitions held in Basel and Leverkusen.

With regard to its meaning, the catalogue texts suggest that the fantastic identifies not so much a stylistic coherence as a shared thematic content. This point was emphasised by Stoll, Plüss, and Langui, the latter highlighting recurring motifs across centuries, such as dreams, the monstrous, and death, that testified to the persistence of a common imaginative framework.53

The relationship between the fantastic and reality also occupied a central place in these discussions. Langui stressed the absence of a clear boundary between reality and fantasy, attributing a decisive role to the historical experience and observational spirit of the Nordic peoples in its development.54 Similarly, in the preface to the Bordeaux catalogue, Brion argued that the fantastic developed in close relation to reality, constituting an additional dimension of reason. At times, he suggested, it appeared concealed within nature itself: in mountains shaped by rain or roots evoking anthropomorphic figures. In other instances it inverted and recombined forms drawn from the known world, as in hybrid figures. Beyond the reorganisation of reality, it could also become an autonomous invention, departing from the tangible world in a process that Brion compared, by analogy, to the emergence of abstract painting.55

Finally, the positions of Langui and Brion regarding the function of the fantastic are particularly significant. Langui attributed to it an epistemic role, presenting it as a privileged means of understanding both the individual and the world.56 Brion highlighted the recurrence of comedy and irony in works by Bosch, Goya, and Grandville, interpreting them as strategies with an apotropaic function, through which the fantastic imagination not only represented anxiety but also contributed to its neutralisation by transforming fear.57

Situated within the broader historical context of the post-war period, the renewed interest in the fantastic revealed by the exhibitions analysed here appears closely linked to the climate of reconstruction and to a desire to emphasise the shared roots of a common artistic and cultural heritage, a cultural prelude to the later construction of a political and economic Europe. In this perspective, the fantastic functioned not merely as an aesthetic category but as a means of tracing long historical continuities capable of symbolically uniting different national traditions. This orientation resonates with the cultural policies promoted by the Council of Europe, founded in 1949 to encourage intellectual exchange among member states. Throughout the 1950s, the Council supported a series of major exhibitions intended to reinforce a shared European identity. Its first exhibition, L’Europe humaniste, held in Brussels in 1954, was followed by further initiatives in Amsterdam, Rome, Munich, and London, all emphasising common roots in European art in ways comparable to the exhibitions devoted to the fantastic. Institutional collaborations further highlight this dynamic. Bosch, Goya et le fantastique, for example, was jointly organised by the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid, with Goya serving as a symbolic bridge between the two cities. In the same year, the Council of Europe Prize was awarded in Bordeaux, reinforcing the alignment between cultural initiatives and broader European ideals. A comparable logic underpinned the 1955 exhibition in Leverkusen, organised through collaboration between the Kunstmuseum Basel and Museum Morsbroich, which sought to present artistic developments from another Rhine city to a German audience, thereby establishing a symbolic link between the two contexts.

This context of European collaboration and shared cultural frameworks raises a further question: why was the fantastic, rather than other artistic categories, particularly suited to this moment? One possible explanation is that it functioned as a subtle counterpoint to the realist tendencies that had dominated European art between the two wars, offering a means of imaginative exploration capable of addressing the uncertainties of the post-war period.

From a complementary perspective, Brion in 1957 attributed the renewed relevance of the fantastic to the emotional climate of the period, shaped by post-war anxiety and precariousness. As he observed: ‘The continuity of themes, the survival of forms, the revival of myths enriched with broader meanings; we are living in an age of anxiety, and, by tradition, the fantastical image is part of the fabric of anxiety […].'58 In this light, the fantastic in post-war exhibitions can be seen as a way in which museums offered symbolic forms for engaging with the anxieties of the present, an enduring function that continues to resonate in periods of uncertainty.

This article was made possible thanks to the second grant to be awarded by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s Surrealism Fund. The fund, formed on the initiative of a private benefactor and active patron of the arts, provides a generous annual gift and was created with 500 Years of Fantastic Art in mind, the exhibition the museum is planning to stage after its reopening. Each year, an emerging art historian is given the opportunity to conduct research into a specific issue relevant to the planned exhibition. The second grant was awarded to Alessia Damioli. In the summer of 2024 she completed her MA in Art History at the École du Louvre, Paris. Her research focuses on twentieth-century art, with particular interests in Surrealism, gender studies, and exhibition histories. In 2025 she was selected for the Biennale College ASAC residency programme of La Biennale di Venezia, held at the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts (ASAC), where she conducted archival research that formed a prelude to the present study and its focus on the 1954 Venice Biennale. The research was supervised by the producers of 500 Years of Fantastic Art: Saskia van Kampen-Prein, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Peter van der Coelen, Curator of Prints and Drawings.

Author
Alessia Damioli

Supervision
Peter van der Coelen
Saskia van Kampen-Prein

Text Editing
Yvonne Brentjens
Phil Clarke

Image Editing and Production
Eva van Bladel
Sabine Terra

Photographic Credits
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam: figs. 1, 7, 13, 14
Kunsthalle Basel: fig. 2
Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia: figs. 3-5, 10
Musea Brugge, photo Dominique Provost: fig. 6
MSK - Museum of Fine Arts Ghent: fig. 8
KMSKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp: fig. 9
Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt: fig. 11
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux: fig. 12

Heading: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, ‘The Drawbridge’, 1761, etching and engraving, 54.7 x 40.8 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

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