After war began in Europe in 1939, many Surrealist artists and writers faced severe danger from Nazi occupation and persecution. New York quickly became a key refuge and an organizing center for displaced European avant-gardes, setting the stage for new transatlantic partnerships and support networks.
In 1940, Stanley William Hayter moved his experimental printmaking workshop, Atelier 17, from Paris to New York due to the war. The studio’s collaborative, technique-driven environment helped bring Surrealist methods such as automatism (making marks without conscious planning) into contact with a wider American artist community.
In September 1940, the magazine View began publication in New York under editor Charles Henri Ford. It became a regular print forum for Surrealist art and writing during the exile years, helping connect émigré artists with American readers and cultural circles.
André Breton, a leading organizer and theorist of Surrealism, arrived in New York in July 1941 after fleeing wartime Europe. His presence mattered because he helped reassemble Surrealist activity in the city through exhibitions, writing, and new publishing efforts.
In March 1942, the Pierre Matisse Gallery presented the exhibition “Artists in Exile,” showing works by fourteen artists who had escaped Nazi-occupied Europe. The show publicly framed these artists as a wartime community in New York and highlighted how galleries became practical hubs for visibility, sales, and survival.
In June 1942, VVV began publication in New York, edited by David Hare with the participation of André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. It served as a focused platform for Surrealist ideas during the exile years and documented collaborations among European émigrés and younger American artists.
On October 14, 1942, “First Papers of Surrealism” opened at the Whitelaw Reid mansion in Manhattan as a benefit organized for the Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies. Curated by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, it presented Surrealism as an active, public presence in New York—rather than a distant European movement.
For “First Papers of Surrealism,” Duchamp created an installation commonly known as “Sixteen Miles of String,” threading twine throughout the exhibition space so visitors had to negotiate the show physically. This approach turned the exhibition into an experience and became a memorable example of how the New York Surrealist network used bold display strategies to attract attention and debate.
On October 20, 1942, Peggy Guggenheim opened Art of This Century at 30 West 57th Street. Designed by Frederick Kiesler, it functioned as both a display space for European modernism (including Surrealism) and a launch pad for emerging American artists, creating a meeting point where émigré Surrealists and younger New Yorkers could interact frequently.
During the World War II years, the Julien Levy Gallery served as a gathering and exhibition space for exiled artists, alongside its earlier role introducing Surrealism to New York audiences. The gallery’s continuity helped stabilize the New York Surrealist scene by keeping work circulating through exhibitions even as artists’ lives were disrupted by war and migration.
In 1946, André Breton returned to France, marking a major shift in the New York exile network. With travel reopening and artists dispersing, the New York Surrealist émigré community began to thin, and the movement’s center of gravity started moving away from emergency wartime organizing.
In 1947, Peggy Guggenheim closed Art of This Century and returned to Europe. The closing signaled a transition: key Surrealist-era gathering places were reshaped or replaced by new postwar galleries, while New York’s art world increasingly focused on different directions (including the rising prominence of Abstract Expressionism).
In 1948, Sidney Janis opened a gallery on East 57th Street that exhibited both European modernists and leading American painters. This mattered for the Surrealist émigré story because it shows how the postwar New York market and exhibition system absorbed and reframed the wartime European presence within a broader, more permanent institutional structure.
In 1952, Atelier 17 moved to a new New York location, reflecting how some Surrealist-linked infrastructure continued even after many leading émigrés had left. By this point, the emergency exile network (1939–1945) had largely transformed into longer-term professional relationships and teaching, publishing, and gallery systems that kept Surrealist techniques in circulation.
Surrealist Emigre Networks in New York (1939–1952)