The major exhibition this fall at the Centre Pompidou celebrates the centenary of the birth of the Surrealist movement in Paris with the publication of André Breton’s celebrated “Manifesto of Surrealism” in October 1924.

We know this movement through a very masculine prism. In the 1920s, women were presented only as muses or lovers. But women Surrealists represent an important chapter of the history of art. In 1943, at her new Art of This Century Gallery in New York, Peggy Guggenheim organized the first exhibition devoted to women artists representing the avant-garde entitled Exhibition by 31 Women: it featured works by Leonora Carrington, Léonor Fini, Frida Kahlo, Valentine Hugo, Jacqueline Lamba, Meret Oppenheim, Kay Sage and Dorothea Tanning. The current Pompidou exhibition is an opportunity to rediscover the historical importance of these women artists.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) who was fascinated by Max Ernst's paintings, became his lover and the two lived in France for three passionate and creative years until the Second World War separated them. She used animal symbolism to express her desire for freedom and place herself in a matriarchal lineage.

In Leonor Fini’s (1908-1996) paintings the male nude becomes an object subjected to the woman’s gaze. Her subjects are ambiguous. She invents a secret universe full of sphinxes and witches. Fini was the most rebellious, theatrical and autonomous of the Surrealist women.

American painter and poet Kay Sage (1898-1963) was one of the last women artists to join the Surrealist group in 1939. She married the French Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy. Her polished surfaces give her paintings great precision, with a strong sense of mystery and melancholy.