About the Exhibition: Overview
The 1930s have already been the subject of major exhibitions in London, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and Paris. These have looked at the decade’s political dimension—the relationship between art and state power, or art and propaganda—or surveyed its aesthetic trends. This summer’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man”, tackles the era from another angle: the unexpected importance for art of biological models, even though they served such widely varied interests.
These models inspired some artists to evolutionary and cellular flights of fantasy that produced a kind of poetry on the genesis of form, in one aspect of abstract art. For others, such as the Surrealists, the evolution of form was shaped by the inner power of desire and the unconscious. The resulting violent metamorphoses were expressed in convulsive forms.
Under the totalitarian regimes, certain pseudo-scientific biological theories fostered destructive political ideologies that fed on eugenics and racism. Artists serving these regimes present images of the “New Man” insidiously disguised with apparently positive values such as the happy family, working the land, and vigorous, athletic youth.
Led by the Director of the National Gallery of Canada, Pierre Théberge, the exhibition’s organizing committee is made up of Commissaire Jean Clair, former Director of the Musée Picasso in Paris; Curators Didier Ottinger, from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Constance Naubert-Riser, professor emeritus from the University of Montreal, and Ann Thomas, NGC Curator of Photography; and Mayo Graham, Director of National Outreach and International Relations at the NGC.