Sixties Surreal
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
From September 24th, 2025 until January 19th, 2026
Sixties Surreal is an ambitious exhibition that offers a new interpretation of American art between 1958 and 1972. Curated with historical rigor and an expanded perspective, the show brings together works by over one hundred artists to present an unexpected and striking portrait of a period marked by social tensions, cultural transformations, and deep existential unrest. At the heart of the exhibition is an aesthetic current often overlooked in the canonical narrative of postwar art history: psychological imagination, visionary eroticism, and political tensions—descendants of the Surrealist legacy, yet reimagined in a form that is radically American. Rather than directly referencing historical Surrealism, Sixties Surreal explores its underground imprint and the way it was translated and evolved in 1960s America into a widespread, everyday language—one capable of absorbing the contradictions of reality and reflecting them back as disturbing, ironic, visionary images.
opening image: Shigeko Kubota, Self-Portrait, c. 1970–71.
In an era when reality seemed increasingly unreal—due to rapid technological change, civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, and postwar social shifts—many artists sought new visual strategies to depict a world in crisis. Featured artists include Diane Arbus, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois, David Hammons, Romare Bearden, and Lee Bontecou. While based in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, or the Bay Area, these artists shared a common urgency: to depict a world inhabited by inner monsters and ghosts, collective visions, and identity-driven tensions.
The experiences and traumas of American society during that time are the starting point of a surrealism conveyed through paintings, photographs, sculptures, and installations that, though diverse in language, evoke a shared sensation—a present slipping through the cracks of rationality, where dream and nightmare intertwine. Sixties Surreal is not only a reassessment of the past, but also an invitation to consider the present with more open eyes, recognising that reality—then as now—can be more surreal than anything the human imagination could devise.
For further information whitney.org.
