Two men invented Surrealist defiance. Women financed it, and a few painted it. The Nantes Museum of Fine Arts has brought together nearly 180 pieces to tell the story of this half that has remained in the shadows.

Surrealism was born here. In Nantes, in 1916, in a military hospital where the orderly André Breton met a wounded soldier, Jacques Vaché, whose defiance would determine the rest. One hundred and ten years later, the museum sheds light on what this birth left in the shadows: those who painted, and those who paid.

In 1943, in New York, Peggy Guggenheim exhibited 31 women; Duchamp and Breton were on the jury. Simone Kahn, Breton's first wife, ran a gallery for eleven years. Marie-Laure de Noailles opened her fortune to those whom no one else was producing. Gallery owners, patrons, collectors: the museum calls them the facilitators.

Then it hangs the others. Claude Cahun photographed herself around 1928 in front of a mirror, in profile, and it is the reflection that stares back at us. With her are Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, Meret Oppenheim, Jacqueline Lamba.

And Jane Graverol's owl between two lit candles, *Le Bon bout de la raison*, which fetched over seventy thousand euros at a Parisian auction in 2024. This is how an exhibition is built: in the auction room, on names that the market didn't value.

Added to this are some forty creations by contemporary artists and works by men, to remind us that these women did the same work.

Find our other regional favorites in our top new regional exhibitions.

NANTES MUSEUM OF ARTS
From November 20, 2026 to March 21, 2027
10 rue Georges-Clemenceau, 44000 Nantes
Price: €9 - Reduced price: €4 - Free for under 18s