During its years as the Seibu Museum of Art, one of the museum’s guiding principles was the introduction of Dada art, resulting in exhibitions such as Marcel Duchamp (1981), Kurt Schwitters (1983), and Francis Picabia (1984). This exhibition continued that trajectory as a major retrospective of Man Ray, one of the leading figures of Dada and Surrealism.
Surveying Man Ray’s wide-ranging artistic practice—including painting, photography, objects, prints, experimental films, and publishing activities—the exhibition featured approximately 670 works, including photographs, many of them hand-made contact prints by the artist that were shown in Japan for the first time.
In addition to works from the museum’s collection previously presented in Man Ray: Objects and Photographs from the Museum Collection (1981), the exhibition included the Cubist painting Le Couple (1914). Today, it is the earliest work in the collection of the Sezon Museum of Modern Art, which holds approximately sixty works by Man Ray, making it one of the most significant collections of his work in Japan.