When you think of the post-war Surrealists, you wouldn’t immediately think that an artist who is known in some circles as “the last of the great Surrealists” is a native Montrealer…
And yet, for the first time on Canadian soil, the Musée des Beaux-Arts presents an exhibition organized by Mexico City’s Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, devoted to the work of Alan Glass, a Mexican surrealist of Montreal origin.
It’s an absolute delight to discover Glass’s work, presented in rooms designed to contain the artist’s poetic microcosms – the automatic drawings, the “assemblage” boxes, the watercolor-painted eggs, the compositions of almost supernatural sophistication.
We previewed the exhibition, which opens to the public on April 17…
Alan Glass (1932-2023)
Montreal-born Alan Glass is described as a passionate, curious man who marveled at everything – and to see his art, which is infused with studious thoroughness and an incredible joie de vivre, you’d have to believe it.
On one of the walls of the exhibition, as deep blue as the Mexico City sky, you can read a phrase of his, written in a letter to a friend: “Every day seems more extraordinary than the one before. Every day my eyes are opened to wonder after wonder.”
Alan Glass traveled extensively – from Montreal to Paris, where he was “discovered” by André Breton, and then to Mexico City, where he spent the longest part of his life.
Museo des Palacio de Bellas Artes chief curator Joshua Sánchez speaks of Mexico as a place of freedom for Glass. In the hundred or so works presented in the exhibition, we see Montreal, Mexican and indigenous artistic material traditions, the influence of Glass’s time in Paris and its strong impact on the style of his work, and the artist’s travels, notably to Nepal.
In this exhibition, we discover Alan Glass, through multiple influences arranged – and assembled – with a delicate creative poetry, restoring his place in the history of Canadian and Quebec art.
Delicacy, drawing and mini-worlds
The exhibition opens with Glass’s automatic drawings, beginning in 1954 – when the ballpoint pen was invented.
The sophistication and meticulousness of these drawings, which are easy to get lost in, are reminiscent of the settings and iconography of Jodorowsky’s films, and it comes as no surprise to discover that they were friends.
But Alan Glass did a bit of everything, and follow a series of watercolors populated by goddesses and mythical figures, painted eggs he sent to friends, and his “assemblages“, scrapbooks in frames and suitcases, little theaters decorated with found objects, natural elements, drawings, little bits of stuff that become a mini-world.
The sublimatory mythification of these assemblages creates, in itself, a new system of legends. One might even say, legends whispered by forgotten ancestors, lost for millennia, dreamt by Glass and rewritten by him with an extreme delicacy of soul.
You’ll want to live inside the artist’s head, and you can get a glimpse by watching artist Manuela de Laborde’ s video of Glass’s home studio in Mexico City’s Roma Norte district… We’ll let you discover it.
“Beyond reality: surrealism in cinema
To accompany the exhibition, a series of surrealist films, either surrealist-inspired or echoing the world of Alan Glass, will be screened at the Cinéma du Musée between April 17 and July 14, 2025.
It starts on April 17 with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Sacred Mountain (1973) , and includes such classics as Vera Chytilová’s Daisies (1966) and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) .
Practical info
When? April 17 – September 28, 2025
Where? at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke Street West
How much? Free for children under 25, $30 for over-26s (except Wednesday evenings, when it’s $15), and free for all Quebec residents on the first Sunday of the month. It’s a good idea to book online before you go!
Bon voyage (into the wonderful worlds of Alan Glass)!