You enter the exhibition through a large maw (a reconstitution of the entrance to the ‘Cabaret de l’Enfer’, which was located on the Boulevard de Clichy until 1950).

If there is one theme that unites all Surrealists, it is the overcoming of logic and order.

To achieve this, they used a wide variety of means, often borrowed from psychoanalysis: hypnosis, dream interpretation, free association (mainly in the form of automatic writing), deconstruction, alchemy, spiritualism and much more. What they brought to paper (canvas, wood, marble, etc.) can be seen here in various forms.

An entire room is dedicated to works of art on the theme of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Lewis Carroll’s childlike heroine, who marvelled at everything and loved the absurd and nonsensical, was the perfect figurehead for the surrealists.

Melusine, a figure from Indo-European mythology, also played a major role and was given her own space.

Man and nature were another main theme of surrealist artists. The three rooms ‘Forests’, ‘Hymns to the Night’ and ‘Cosmos’ bear witness to this. Works by Max Ernst, André Breton, René Magritte, Antonin Arnaud and even Caspar David Friedrich can be seen here.

The room ‘The Tears of Eros’ brings together numerous works inspired by the Marquis de Sade (French author 1740 – 1814), which is why it is also labelled with a trigger warning indicating the potentially ‘disturbing effect’. I didn’t find it that bad – but everyone has to make their own judgement.