Bezoekers van opening surrealisme-tentoonstelling galerie Robert Amsterdam 1938 1938

Lilly Samuel made this photograph of visitors at the opening of a Surrealism exhibition at Galerie Robert in Amsterdam in 1938. The image captures the cultural landscape of the late 1930s, as the specter of war was rising over Europe. In the Netherlands, there was still room for avant-garde art to be exhibited and appreciated, as we can see from the presence of elegant figures at an exhibition opening, even as the Nazi threat was looming over the country. Surrealism, with its emphasis on dreams and the irrational, offered a way to challenge the increasing sense of political polarization at the time. Yet we have to remember that the freedoms of the Netherlands at the time were not extended to all. The photographer herself, Lilly Samuel, a Jewish woman, was murdered by the Nazis only a few years after she took this photograph. If we want to understand this image, we must turn to historical archives to get a fuller view of the fraught times in which it was made.