Joan Miró, Shooting Star (1938), oil on canvas [Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver BC, May 28-Sep 25] National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Joseph H. Hazen

Edith Rimmington, The Oneiroscopist (1947), oil on canvas [Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver BC, May 28-Sep 25] The Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art in the Israel Museum. Photo: © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art showcases art by more than 80 leading Surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Breton, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Cornell, Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy. Four years in the making, the historic exhibit is the largest and most ambitious show of Surrealist art to be held in Canada.

The Surrealist movement had an ambitious theme: to express the unconscious without the constraints of rational thought. Influenced by early films, French literature, the nihilism of Dada and Sigmund Freud’s investigations of human psychology,

Surrealism gave birth to automatism, drottage and fumage among other experimentations, and spawned an unprecedented breadth of radical artwork: paintings, sculptures, collage, photographs, rayographs and films. Particularly memorable is the Surrealist “object”, an approach to sculpture where unrelated components are combined to conjure new meanings.

The 350 pieces were culled from 60 prominent private collections, museums and galleries. The exhibit includes films that reveal the provocative nature of Surrealist film-making, and is accompanied by a 336-page hardcover book edited by curator Dawn Ades.

Mia Johnson