The victory of surrealism, from sectarian movement to mainstream current

Dorothea Tanning, Meret Oppenheim, Josephine Baker, Leonor Fini. One of all: Leonora Carrington. The rediscovery of a current that is a feeling. Perhaps the one with the most female representatives among all

Italy has long struggled to accept the surrealism, a movement – even if the definition is perhaps narrow – which lasted for decades and which, given its loose categorization, boasts a large number of temporary representatives and affiliates in all imaginable disciplines. Perceived in Italy as too destructive, and still too tied to Dada, surrealism at the end of the 1920s appears to Eugenio Montale as a “Parisian babel”. Ardengo Soffici speaks of “decadent pleasantries and witticisms”.