With RENDEZVOUS OF DREAMS, the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents until 12th October 2025 a comprehensive exhibition on international Surrealism on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of this movement, tracing German Romanticism as one of the most important intellectual affinities of Surrealism. Based on a pair of images from the Kunsthalle that are being discussed for the first time, over 230 surrealist icons by major and newly discovered surrealists such as Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, René Magritte, André Masson, Salvador Dalí, Dorothea Tanning, Paul Klee, Valentine Hugo, Victor Brauner, Toyen, and many others in novel contexts and exciting juxtapositions with over 70 masterpieces of German Romanticism, including works by Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, as well as Romantic poetry. Key themes such as the fascination of German Romantic artists and poets with dreams – understood as a higher form of vision – the imagination, the night, but also the microcosm and macrocosm, and a special feeling for nature were among the sources of inspiration that Surrealism adopted a century later. The attitudes and imagery of Friedrich, Runge, Carl Gustav Carus, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, and many others played an important role in the search for revolutionary art in the 20th century, as did the writings of Novalis, Achim and Bettine von Arnim, Karoline von Günderrode, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Heinrich von Kleist. Surprisingly, this was particularly true during the years of war, resistance, and exile. Surrealism tied in with Romanticism as a reaction against the “disenchantment of the world” and reflected its revolutionary dimension; the goal of both movements was an attitude toward life, the questioning of a seemingly given reality and its limits, and thus nothing less than a transformation of both the individual and society. Even though born out of different historical situations, Novalis’ credo of “romanticizing the world” seems to anticipate the group’s quest for a higher spiritual revolt in a “surreality.”
Image above: Max Ernst, 1891–1976. Der Hausengel (Der Triumph des Surrealismus) (L’ange du foyer (Le triomphe du surréalisme))1937, Öl auf Leinwand, 114,2 x 146,5 cm, Collection Hersaint, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025 Foto: Vincent Everarts Photography Brussels.
In the overview, which also includes selected works from the museum’s own collection, analogies and differences between works from both movements become apparent in stimulating juxtapositions as well as in explicit homages: for example, in Max Ernst’s painting Ein schöner Morgen (Un beau matin) with Der Morgen (first version) (1808) by Philipp Otto Runge. Ernst painted it in 1965 after his first visit to the Hamburger Kunsthalle and refers conceptually and formally to Runge, whom he admired. Both masterpieces have been in the Kunsthalle’s collection for more than 60 years and are now being considered and presented together for the very first time. Another surprising Hamburg reception history unfolds around the famous key image of Surrealism, Max Ernst’s The Rendezvous of Friends (1922), with newly researched contexts. A contemporary work, the video piece Manifesto (2015) by Julian Rosefeldt, introduces the exhibition and the topicality of the question posed by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto 100 years ago, focusing on the importance of imagination, dreaming, and discovering other levels of reality. In the “Rendezvous of Dreams,” specific local and highly international discoveries, as well as those spanning media and epochs, come together.
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is organizing the exhibition in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’Art Moderne, Paris, for the first time, and is able to display over 30 exceptional loans from the latter, such as Salvador Dalí’s The Invisibles – Sleeping, Horse, Lion (1930) and René Magritte’s The Double Secret (1927). Taken as a whole, this comprehensive exhibition offers a unique opportunity to experience world-famous works, some of which have never been shown before, from over 80 international, private, and public collections in the US, Mexico, and throughout Europe, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Colección FEMSA (Mexico); the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Tate London; the Kunsthalle Prague; the Kunsthaus Zurich and many more, as well as from over 30 international private collections, some of which have remained hidden until now.
The works on display, dating from the late 18th century to 1980, encompass all media: a total of approximately 300 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, films, sculptures, and objects by 65 Surrealists and 30 Romantics have been brought together. Among them are many still little-known Surrealist women such as Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Suzanne Van Damme, and Jane Graverol. A large number of archival materials and manuscripts also trace the reception of German Romantics by Surrealism.
In 15 chapters covering topics such as friendship, dreams, metamorphoses, feelings about nature, love, ruins, forests, and the cosmos to hymns to the night, the extensive exhibition focuses on analogies and differences in themes, philosophies, paradigms, motifs, and methods in art, poetry, and theory, beginning with a reflection on André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto and explicit homages by the Surrealists to the German Romantics.
RENDEZVOUS OF DREAMS comprises three exhibition areas and covers a total of 2,000 square meters, stretching from the Hubertus Wald Forum (1/Dream) through a “passage” consisting of several cabinets, where background information is provided, to the room in front of the rotunda in the Lichtwarkbau (2/Forest) and leading up to the representative domed hall (3/Cosmos).
In the “passage” between the exhibition sections, visitors are invited to interact as part of the educational and outreach program: inspired by the original works, they can explore and try out various artistic techniques, surrealist processes, and games. In addition to a photo station and the surrealist game Cadavre Exquis, romantic and surrealist literature is available to immerse visitors in the artists’ worlds of thought. One station invites visitors to listen to sounds and associate scents with works of art in preparation for exhibition section 2/Forest. A wide range of public and privately bookable guided tours are also available, as are free audio tours for adults (German/English) and for children and young people aged 8 and above (German), which can be accessed via the Kunsthalle app. Once a month on Saturdays, the Open Studio for the whole family offers the opportunity to try out various artistic techniques, among other things.
The comprehensive program of events offers discussion and lecture formats such as expert, panel, and artist talks at the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Abaton cinema, which is presenting a comprehensive surrealist film program in collaboration with the museum. Among other things, internationally renowned artist Julian Rosefeldt will explain the background to his work Manifesto and the impact of surrealism (September 4). At Salon Surreal (September 18), current topics related to the exhibition will be explored through music and with exciting guests. The Young Friends of the Friends of the Kunsthalle e. V. are hosting a big party (July 3).
The exhibition is part of the international celebration of Surrealism marking the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto and will be presented in a different form at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (February 21 to July 21, 2024), the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (September 4, 2024 to January 13, 2025), the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid (February 6 to May 11, 2025), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (November 8, 2025 to February 16, 2026).
WHEN?
From Friday, June 13, to Sunday, October 12, 2025.
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Sunday: 10 am–6 pm
Thursday: 10 am–9 pm
WHERE?
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Glockengießerwall 5
20095 Hamburg
COSTS?
Regular: EUR 16
Reduced: EUR 8
