Surrealism's Startling Appeal

Surrealism is set to fire the imagination at auctions in London next week.

On Tuesday, Christie's will follow its major Impressionist and modern art sale with one devoted to "The Art of the Surreal." On Wednesday, Sotheby's will include a range of striking Surrealist works in its main Impressionist and modern art auction. "We prefer to show Surrealism in the whole context of modern art," says Sotheby's specialist Samuel Valette.

Surrealism was a revolutionary movement of writers and artists that rose between the two world wars and ended with the death in 1966 of its founder, the French poet Andre Breton.

Stressing the subconscious and dreams, the movement's artists created startling images filled with hidden meanings, strange combinations of everyday objects and unforgettable erotic figures. They were also experimental in using all techniques at hand, including the new effects opened by photography. Later stars of the art world that were influenced by the European Surrealists include America's Jackson Pollock and American-French grande dame of the global art world Louise Bourgeois.

Many Surrealists were undervalued at the start of the 21st century, despite their great influence on subsequent generations of artists, says Olivier Camu, Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art deputy chairman. To raise awareness, the auction house started dedicated Surrealist sales in 2001. It was a slow start, he notes, but now many previously undervalued artists have taken off, such as Max Ernst. Others, he says, still have a way to go, such as Francis Picabia, who is represented in next week's sales. "Surrealists have hit a nerve of our times," Mr. Camu says. "We are living in an age of psychology and eroticism."

Both Christie's and Sotheby's will offer monumental and rare works by Joan Miro. At Christie's, there will be one of his famous "Painting-Poem" canvases from 1925, in which the artist creates an hallucinatory atmosphere mixing Abstraction, free-flowing forms and text . At Sotheby's, "Peinture" comes from another group of iconic Miro paintings from 1933 . The painting is full of energy, pouring out from free forms in red, white, yellow and blue, seen against a delicate brown and green background. Standing before this picture, I was stunned by its combination of power and subtlety. I could only agree with Mr. Valette when he said, "It doesn't get better than this."

Rene Magritte is always a top Surrealist attraction, combining mystery, beauty and humor. A work at Christie's that deals with the hidden side of life will be "La Parade," a painting from 1940, the year the Nazis invaded his homeland of Belgium. This seemingly simple image shows a leafless tree before a red curtain, hiding a desert landscape. I don't pretend to understand it, but there is an enormous impact there in its hidden meanings . At Sotheby's, a dreamy, blue painting of a large petrified apple under a distant moon is pure poetry, designed to give plenty of contemplative moments .

For eroticism, it's hard to beat Paul Delvaux, who specialized in naked beauties in totally strange backgrounds, such as "The Nude and the Mannequin" . The painting at Christie's depicts a white Venus figure stretched on a couch in a railway station, with a black tailor's dummy at her side . A gentler side of Surrealist eroticism is represented by Picabia's transparencies, paintings where the artist transposes the images of beautiful women upon each other. "Hero"  at Christies, in which women's heads float against a backdrop of a nude, creates a sensual vision as in a dream .