September 6, 2025–March 1, 2026

Alfredo Castañeda: Beyond Surrealism brings together thirty-five paintings from outstanding private collections in North America and Spain for the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States. The exhibition covers five decades of the artist’s wide-ranging international career and his unique exploration of Surrealist themes through deeply personal iconography and distinctive visual narrative.

Alfredo Castañeda (Mexico City, 1938-2010, Madrid) was one of the most prolific and impactful champions of the Surrealist movement in Latin America and in the later twentieth century. While training as an architect at the National University of Mexico, he studied with Mattias Goeritz, whose work inspired him to expand his art practice to include painting. Castañeda had practiced drawing since childhood, but he was further encouraged by an encounter with René Magritte’s work. Marked by introspection, psychological investigation, whimsy,
and an acutely self-aware sense of humor, Castañeda’s paintings have a magical realist quality and high degree of visual finish. Many scenes feature trompe l’oeil effects that call into question the artist’s trustworthiness as a narrator, as the realism the viewer sees is often at odds with the absurdities of what the artist chooses to represent. Themes of family, self, identity, and journey are all at the forefront of this striking artist’s visual vocabulary.

Featured at top right: Alfredo Castañeda, Memento for an Exile (Recordatorio para un exilado) (detail), 1989. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo: Germán Romero Martínez / Alex Michajlowski.