Imagery of Chess

Celebrates the extraordinary 1944-45 exhibition 'The Imagery of Chess'. A virtual 'who's-who' of artists such as Man Ray and Isamu Noguchi were asked to redesign the standard chess set or otherwise explore chess imagery and its symbolism. The results are catalogued here.

The Imagery of Chess Revisited recovers a celebrated and extraordinary moment in art history: the 1944-45 exhibition The Imagery of Chess, held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The exhibit was a legend in its own time and has been considered a singular event in the history of art exhibitions ever since. The show''s organisers - the influential art dealer Julien Levy, the Surrealist painter Max Ernst, and Dada leader Marcel Duchamp, himself a serious chess player - invited a virtual ''who''s who'' of artists and members of the cultural avant-garde to redesign the standard chess set or otherwise explore chess imagery and its symbolism in bold new ways.Participants included famous European expatriates and soon-to-be famous American modernists: André Breton, Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Ernst, Man Ray, Isamu Noguchi, and Yves Tanguy are among those who contributed chess sets; John Cage and Vittorio Rieti created original musical scores; and Dorothea Tanning, Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Man Ray, Matta, Robert Motherwell, and others produced pivotal chess-related paintings, sculptures and photographic works.