RENDEZVOUS OF DREAMS

In the summer of 2025, the Hamburger Kunsthalle will launch a major exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Surrealism, taking as its starting point a comparison of two paintings first addressed by the Kunsthalle. In RENDEZVOUS OF DREAMS, over 180 Surrealist icons by Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Valentine Hugo, Toyen, André Masson, Victor Brauner, Paul Klee and many others will meet up with around 60 Romantic masterpieces by artists including Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, conveying both explicit homages and stimulating juxtapositions. International Surrealism displayed a marked intellectual affinity for German Romanticism. The Romantic artists’ fascination with dream worlds, nocturnal scenes, the microcosm and macrocosm as well as a special feeling for nature provided a key source of inspiration for Surrealism one century later. Alongside Romantic poets such as Novalis, Achim and Bettine von Arnim, Heinrich von Kleist and Karoline von Günderrode, the artists Friedrich and Runge likewise played an important role in the search for a revolutionary form of art in the twentieth century. A total of around 250 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and objects by 55 Surrealists and 25 Romantics will be brought together, both world-famous works and others that have never been exhibited before, from over 70 private and public collections in the USA, Mexico and throughout Europe, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MoMA New York, Tate London, Kunsthalle Prague, Kunsthaus Zürich and many more, as well as from the museum’s own collection

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The show is the first-ever collaboration between the Kunsthalle and the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’Art Moderne, Paris, ensuring exceptional works on loan from the latter. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of international Surrealism, the Kunsthalle and Centre Pompidou are also collaborating with the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels; the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the show will be adapted to the artistic and historical contexts of the respective countries. 

Admission slots can already be purchased for the exhibition in Hamburg.