‘Cul Glacé / Frozen bottom' is the fourth exhibition in a row which the Kunsthal puts on display in order to shed light on Romanian avant-garde. After the First World War artists were looking for a new visual language. In Romania artists formed groups around magazines in order to lay down their ideas. One of the most renowned magazines was UNU, for which both well-known and unknown artists from surrealist history collaborated.
At the exhibition works are shown by famous Romanian artists like Victor Brauner, Jacques Hérold, Gherasim Luca and Jules Perahim and by international, illustrious artists like Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and Tristan Tzara, who exchanged their artistic range of thoughts through UNU.
With over one hundred works, amongst which drawings, texts, books, paintings and objects the exhibition displays a sequence of language games, black humour, erotic thoughts and revolutionary ideas.
Romanian Surrealism 1928-1947
Led by André Breton Surrealism grows out to become an influential Europian artistic movement which puts the human spirit and the subconscious first. Romanian artists Tristan Tzara and Constantin Brancusi, both living in Paris at the time, bring other artists from Romania into contact with surrealism. They become interested in theories about the subconscious and dreams (Sigmund Freud).
With the establishing of UNU magazine by Saºa Panã in 1928 the first Romanian platform for surrealist experiments comes into being. Especially Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost investigate new visual techniques like automatic drawing, blind painting and paint blowing. A series of drawings by Trost, whose complete oeuvre up to now had been considered to be lost, is exhibited. Furthermore, the exhibition pays special attention to photography by Aurel Bauh, who had fallen into oblivion.
The exhibition is the final piece in a sequence on Romanian avant-garde. Earlier on the Kunsthal paid attention to Dadaism, Cubism and Constructivism with the exhibitions ‘Brancusi, Tzara en de Roemeense avant-garde' (1997), ‘Marcel Janco, Dadaïst in hart en nieren' (2003) and ‘M.H.M. Maxy, Roemeens avant-gardist' (2006).
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by two publications, Miscarea de la UNU (1928-1947) and Album Aurel Bauh, published by Michael Ilk
