Surrealism, the most famous artistic movement of the 20th century, emerged in Paris one hundred years ago. Emerging from the catastrophe of the First World War, it shaped the entire following century as an intellectual movement. The Surrealists saw a groundbreaking affinity with German Romanticism: the supernatural and irrational, dreams and chance as well as a new sense of nature were also key sources of inspiration for them. André Masson, Meret Oppenheim, Victor Brauner and Valentine Hugo paid explicit homage to the poets of Romanticism. The motifs, attitudes and pictorial processes of Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge and Carl Gustav Carus had a surprising significance for Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Toyen and many other well-known and lesser-known Surrealists in their search for a revolutionary art.

The exhibition is being organized for the first time in cooperation with the Centre Pompidou, Paris. It offers a special focus within the European centenary celebration of Surrealism.