The Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City is showcasing five decades of the work of Canadian surrealist artist Alan Glass, who made his home in Mexico for much of his career.
The new retrospective, “Alan Glass: Surprising Finding” (“Alan Glass: Sorprendente Hallazgo”), opens Wednesday and runs through Feb. 16, 2025.
Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1932, Glass found in Mexico a primary source of inspiration. He moved to the country in 1970 after discovering one of Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead sugar skulls and lived in Mexico City up until his death in 2023.
The works on display contain biographical references to the artist, from previously unseen automatist drawings created in Paris to rich representations of his most iconic surrealist objects.
The magazine Time Out Mexico describes the exhibition, which brings together 125 pieces, as “a dreamlike walk with a fascinating collection of works that include painting, drawing, assemblages and video.”
The collection also references key figures in the surrealist genre with whom Glass was connected, including author André Breton in France — who introduced him to surrealism — Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and British expat surrealist artist and novelist Leonora Carrington, the latter two in Mexico.
Glass was one of the the last foreign artists associated with the surrealist movement to settle in Mexico. The exhibition features pieces and boxes he built during his life in Mexico City, in which he used ordinary materials, such as buttons, human hair, insects, and matches, as well as curiosities he found in flea markets and bazaars.
The artist’s ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary is a major focus of the exhibit.
La cultura mexicana influyó profundamente en la obra de Alan Glass, especialmente en la creación de objetos surrealistas con elementos encontrados, como botones, cabello o insectos, transformando lo ordinario en extraordinario.
En el marco del 90 aniversario del @mbellasartes y… pic.twitter.com/a1tIYIhUIK
— Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (@bellasartesinba) October 30, 2024
A quick overview to music of some of Glass’s art on display in the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts.
“Glass found in the local culture an inexhaustible source of material and spiritual inspiration,” the museum noted on its website.
Overall, the exhibition showcases the artist’s creative process and recurrent concerns: nature, desire, travel, the sacred and death. It is curated by experts Joshua Sánchez, Xavier de la Riva, Abigail Susik, and Swedish researcher Kristoffer Noheden. On display in the museum’s Siqueiros, Camarena, Orozco and Tamayo exhibition halls, the exhibit is open to visitors Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
De la Riva and Susik will also hold a free lecture in English about Glass’s art on Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. Reservations are not needed, but attendance is limited to 80 people.
Mexico News Daily
