Landmark exhibition exploring the Surrealist pictures of Man Ray and Max Dupain opens at Heide Museum of Modern Art

On show till 9 November 2025, Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled Man Ray and Max Dupain, a landmark exhibition that brings into dialogue the contemporaneous pictures of famend American-born artist Man Ray (1890–1976) and eminent Australian photographer Max Dupain (1911–1992). This is the primary main Australian exhibition to think about these two influential Twentieth-century photographers facet by facet.

Curated by Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, Man Ray historian and Artistic Director of Photo Days, Paris, and Lesley Harding, Artistic Director of Heide Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition Man Ray and Max Dupain options over 200 pictures with a give attention to the artists’ respective engagements with Surrealism.

“Man Ray was a revolutionary. His radical approach to photography, embracing chance, accident, and abstraction, redefined the medium,” stated Co-curator and Artistic Director of Photo Days, Paris Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais.

“Seeing how these ideas echoed and evolved in the work of Max Dupain reveals an intriguing cross-cultural story of modernism and artistic rebellion.”

From the nude, nonetheless life and portraits, to trend and promoting, the exhibition presents a uncommon alternative to discover the intersecting but distinct visible languages of two artists who formed trendy pictures throughout continents.

Central to the exhibition is the transformative affect that Man Ray had on Max Dupain. A pioneering determine within the Dada and Surrealism actions, Man Ray reworked pictures by means of revolutionary methods reminiscent of solarisation and his iconic rayographs, camera-less photographs that blurred the boundary between abstraction and realism.

His affect reached Australian photographer Max Dupain, who, after encountering the ebook Photographs by Man Ray 1920–1934, decisively moved away from Pictorialism and began trialling the most recent photographic practices and processes that may turn into a characteristic of each his inventive and industrial output for the following years.

Featuring key works reminiscent of Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) and Larmes de Verre (1932), alongside Dupain’s Solarised Hands and Flowers (c.1934) and Torso within the Sun (1941), the exhibition presents two masters of pictures at their most creative.

The exhibition additionally considers the artists’ inventive and romantic partnerships, Man Ray with Lee Miller, and Max Dupain with Olive Cotton, revealing how these collaborations formed their respective oeuvres and emphasising the usually unsung contribution of girls artists to Surrealism and inventive innovation.

“This exhibition continues Heide’s commitment to contextualising Australian artists within broader international modernist movements. In bringing together the contemporaneous work of Man Ray and Max Dupain, we illuminate a fascinating dialogue of influence, experimentation, and artistic vision,” stated Heide Museum of Modern Art Director, Lesley Harding.

Accompanying the exhibition is a richly illustrated catalogue that includes essays by curators Lesley Harding and Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais alongside texts by Tamara Abramovitch, Judy Annear, Lana De Lorenzi, Helen Ennis, Shaune Lakin, Gael Newton, Antony Penrose and Susan van Wyk.

Man Ray and Max Dupain presents Australian audiences a compelling take a look at how two visionary artists, working worlds aside, redefined the probabilities of pictures.

Man Ray and Max Dupain
Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen
Exhibition continues to 9 November 2025
Entry charges apply

For extra data, go to: www.heide.com.au for particulars.

Image: Installation view, Man Ray and Max Dupain, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2025 – picture by Ruby Taylor