ABSTRACT
La Peinture surréaliste, the first exhibition of Surrealist painting, opened at midnight on 13 November 1925. The crowds flooded the Galerie Pierre to see nineteen paintings by Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, André Masson, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Pierre Roy. Although the route through which the information about this historic exhibition reached Japan might have been unconventional, Moriguchi’s text was not the first instance in which reproductions of Surrealist painting were seen in the country, as they were circulated at least through subscriptions to such art magazines as Cahiers d’art. Literary Surrealism preceded the practice of Surrealist painting in Japan by several years. Surrealism emerged as a literary movement in 1920s Paris after several years of collective activities of an early Surrealist group. In Japan, the Marxist left and the associated proletarian art movement were outlawed by 1934, with surveillance extending to Surrealist practices.
