The first art exhibition dedicated to "Alice in Wonderland" opened in Hamburg

The first ever exhibition was opened in Hamburg, at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, combining nearly 200 works created based on a fairy tale over 150 years of its history, including paintings, sculptures, book illustrations, photographs, drawings, films and installations. The exhibition is widely covered in the media.

Alice Pleasant Liddell, prototype of Alice’s character from Alice in Wonderland, 1858 photo from the collection of the National Gallery in London

Artistic reflections on the theme of Alice in Wonderland clearly show how much is hidden in this seemingly childish history, the principles of logic and real philosophical problems. At the same time, there are many absurd, illogical elements, subtle wit and irony in it. Alice became a metaphor for finding meaning, exploring issues of personality and self-awareness, space and time, creativity and empirical reality.

John Tenniel, a classic art illustration, created a compelling visual world for the first edition of the book, full of characters that have been living their own lives since then: Alice, Cheshire Cat, Humpty Dumpty, White Rabbit and Mad Hatter. And from the mid-19th century, many artists have been looking for their own path, depicting the absurdity of a world first discovered by a curious and fearless girl.

The exhibition offers viewers innovative illustrations and documents related to the theatrical adaptation of the film and books about Alice. The exhibition has a strong emphasis on surrealism, vividly presented in the works of Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. The story was further developed in the works of artists of the 1960s and 70s, who showed interest in forms of expanding consciousness and a new understanding of the relationship of language and image. The last group of works - paintings by contemporary artists, Stefan Huber, Anna Gaskell, Kiki Smith and Pipilotti Rist, demonstrate, rather, the extraordinary charm and symbolism of a fairy tale.

Anna Sidorova