In 1924, André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism professed the abandonment of reason and the realistic for the free-flowing imagination in pursuit of man’s full potential as “inveterate dreamer”. A hundred years onwards, the liberation of the subconscious persists as both artistic technique and transformative practice within the artist’s daily life–and thus surrealism lives on beyond narrowly defined historical lines into postwar and contemporary art.

The selection of this auction mirrors the spirit of surrealism itself, marked by unbound associations between artists and periods in the Romanian and wider European context–from interwar artists Jules Perahim and Jacques Hérold to diverse contemporary figures such as Adrian Ghenie, Ștefan Câlția, Ecaterina Vrana, or Ion Grigorescu. Many of the works question the limits of corporeality alongside the boundaries between reality and imagination, rethinking the nature of things in the process–and powerfully capturing the intensity of emotions. In works such as those of Mimi Saraga Maxy, Dorian Szasz or Peter Jecza, abstraction as employed and questioned technique arises, alongside imagination, as a powerful tool to reflect on space, time, the self, and collectivity as psychological categories that make up our worlds.

Finally, the strong need to abandon clear-cut boundaries in liberating artistic processes is encapsulated by the Cadavre Exquis (c. 1930) work included in this auction, whose collaborating creators include Tristan Tzara, the founder of the Dada movement, and André Breton himself.