"From Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning: Networks of Surrealism" will be open at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin through March 1, 2026.  The exhibition highlights a two-year research project investigating the provenances of works from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, which now belongs to the Neue Nationalgalerie.  The historical journeys of these paintings and sculptures are examined to reveal the complex international networks of artists, art dealers, and collectors involved in the Surrealist movement, illustrating their friendships, collecting passions, and stories of personal loss, persecution, and new beginnings during politically challenging times.  Among the works in the Pietzsch Collection is the painting Voltage (1942).

"International Surrealism" is on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through March 22, 2026.  Commemorating the Surrealist movement's centennial, this exhibition brings over 100 works from the collection of the Tate Modern in London, including the sculpture Pelote d'épingles pouvant servir de fétiche (Pincushion to Serve as Fetish) (1965).

"SPELLBOUND" is on view at Firestorm Foundation in Stockholm through March 21, 2026.  Curated by the London-based writer Jennifer Higgie, the exhibition brings together historic and contemporary works by women and non-binary artists and explores shared artistic concerns around myth, material, the body, and the imagination.  Drawn from the Firestorm Foundation Collection, the show includes the painting Visite jaune (1960).

"Endless Sunday: Maurizio Cattelan & The Centre Pompidou Collection" is on view at Centre Pompidou-Metz through February 2, 2027. Celebrating the site's 15th anniversary, the exhibition places pieces from the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in dialogue with the work of Maurizio Cattelan. With an organizational structure based on the alphabet and references to poetry, film, and literature, the show features painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, video, and film, and includes the sculpture De quel amour (By What Love) (1969).

JOAN Publishing has re-released Fish Out of Water by Claire-Louise Bennett (first published in 2020 by Juxta Press, Milan, as part of their Words for Portraits series), with the new poem Self-Portrait with Wings by Chloe Aridjis.  Bennett wrote Fish Out of Water in response to seeing Dorothea Tanning's painting Self-Portrait (1944) and a sense of affinity with the artist; Aridjis's piece was written in response to Bennett's text and inspired by Tanning's painting Birthday (1942).

Amy Lyford has published Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life Dorothea Tanning (Reaktion Books, 2023). In this new monograph, Lyford focuses on key examples of Tanning's work in various media from her early Surrealist imagery through her late-career paintings. By discussing them in relation to concurrent topics of 20th-century art, society, and popular culture, and highlighting the artist's own ideas about ways to view her art, including a satirical, fantasy-based, documentary-style film about her paintings, Lyford examines Tanning's singular approach to creating a rich visual experience for the viewer.

Anna Watz has edited a new collection of essays, A History of the Surrealist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2023).  Her essay "The Mother Figure in the Surrealist Novel" and Catriona McAra's "Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel" examine Tanning's novel Chasm: A Weekend, while Katharine Conley's essay "Autobiography" discusses Tanning's memoir Birthday in the context of Surrealist writings. These are among twenty scholarly essays that consider many texts previously left out of critical accounts of the surrealist movement -- texts written by men and women in French, English, Spanish, German, Greek, and Japanese, from its emergence in the 1920s and 1930s, through the post-war and postmodern periods, and up to the present moment.

Kasmin Gallery has published the exhibition catalogue Dorothea Tanning: Doesn’t the Paint Say It All?  Both the show and the book take their title from Tanning’s own essay entitled "To Paint," which is included in the publication. This poetic and impassioned text, first published in 1986, describes the artist's creative process and the nature of the medium itself.   The catalogue also explores the artist's unique surrealist practice and the tension between abstraction and figuration in her work through reflections on Tanning’s paintings by three art historians and scholars of surrealism: Mary Ann Caws, Katharine Conley, and Victoria Carruthers.  Hyperallergic nominated the publication as one of "The Best Art Books of 2022."   

Victoria Carruthers' monograph Dorothea Tanning: Transformations (Lund Humphries, 2020) offers an insightful study of the artist's life and career and the range and depth of her work and her enduring thematic preoccupations. The book is extensively illustrated and features previously unpublished material from interviews that the author conducted with Tanning between 2000 and 2009. Carruthers discusses the book in an interview found here.

We are looking for information about a number of paintings in the effort to fully document Dorothea Tanning's work for a catalogue raisonné. If you have seen any of these paintings, please contact us.

Concerning Wishes (1942)

Le Petit Marquis (1947)

Angel in Mauve and Orange (Study for Anges gardiens) (1947)

Les Infatigables (The Indefatigables) (1965)