Surrealism is based upon the dream, the irrational and the fantastic. Nevertheless, the most striking common feature of the artists represented in this modest but significant exhibition, is neo-romanticism. Further, from the vantage point of 1962, the purported literal illogicality of objects represented together in one context no longer appears either as illogical or as important as it must have decades ago. DeChirico’s Il Trovatore is as solid as a Mantegna and as Classic as a David; Picabia’s extraordinarily emotional Personnages could be mistaken for an important pre-World War I Kandinsky; the automatism of Andre Masson’s lyrical pastels, La Danse and Composition is not only “reasonable,” but significant for its plastic fervor and directness. Strange bedfellows, these men. It was barely an idea and certainly not a style they shared. And the core of the idea, historically jumbled with facets of Dada, was born from a simple negation of past canons. (Canons which were originally literary, and later, with the publication of Andre Breton’s first manifesto in 1924, pictorial). Some doubtful Surrealists are possibly included in this Acosta showing, but the general quality of each work is high enough to justify inclusion. There are excellent examples of works, in addition to the aforementioned, by Survage and Dominguez. One might have wished for an expanded presentation, with such names as Miró, Dalí, Tanguy, Ernst, perhaps a Picasso of the right period.

—Arthur Secunda