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Surrealism and abstract expressionism
France > Paris > Beaubourg > Pompidou Centre > Surrealism

Surrealism, an offshoot of the Dada movement, dominates in later rooms with works by Magritte, Dali and Ernst. Typical of the movement's exploration of the darker recesses of the mind, Ernst's disturbing Ubu Imperator (1923; room 20) depicts a figure that is part man, part Tower of Pisa and part spinning top, and would seem to symbolize the perversion of male authority.

Shying away from the figurative, American abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko make an appearance in room 34. In Pollock's splattery No 26A, Black and White (1948), the two colours seem to struggle for domination; the dark bands of colour in Rothko's large canvas No. 14 (Browns over Dark), in contrast, draw the viewer in.

Matisse's later experiments with form and colour are on show in room 41. His technique of découpage (creating a picture from cut-out coloured pieces of paper) freed colour from drawing and line, and is perfected in works like La Tristesse du Roi (1952), in which a woman dances while an elderly king plays a guitar, mourning his lost youth.


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