SECRET ART
There are artworks in our new collection which you may not be as familiar with; pieces from Seuss’s ‘secret art’ collection heavily influenced by surrealist art, which he created separately from his children’s books. By the time Theodor Geisel visited Paris in 1926, the surrealist movement had already become a force with its first group show Exposition Surréaliste taking place in 1925. Joan Miró and Paul Klee would also show solo in Paris that year, then Yves Tanguy in 1927 and Salvador Dalí in 1929. Theodor, in the right place at the right time, considered Paris the exhilarating axis of his world, and he absorbed anything the arts offered. This early and powerful influence of surrealism stayed with Theodor throughout adulthood and is realized in his Secret Art paintings. Illustrator by day, surrealist by night, Dr Seuss created a body of irrepressible work during his leisure hours that would redefine him as an iconographic American artist. Revealing a dazzling rainbow of hues not seen in the primary-colour palette of his books for children, these paintings exhibit a sophisticated, technically accomplished, and often quite unrestrained side of his talent.
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