Sigmund Freud declared himself incapable of understanding surrealism when its founder, André Breton, tried to get him to embrace that artistic movement. A century after the meeting between the two, more than 100 surrealist works hang in the old Viennese home of the “father of psychoanalysis”.

Titled “Surreal! The imagination of new realities”, the exhibition, open until October 16, reflects on an unusual, asymmetrical and tense relationship, on the one hand; lasting, undoubtedly fruitful and today historic, on the other.

Exhibition ”Surreal! The Imagination of New Realities” at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Viena

SOUNDBITES

Daniela Finzi, Curator of the exhibition (translation): “Breton and his initial circle of literary figures, who formed in Paris in the early 1920s, rely on Freud for their insights into the dream, sexuality, the confrontation between psychic and material reality, and, of course, the complex unconscious facets of the human being, whom Freud sees as being driven by desire and instincts”. EFE via Reuters