Iván Tovar: Le Retour positions the artist’s transatlantic trajectory—formative years in the Dominican Republic, two decades working in Paris, and an eventual return home—as central to the global history of Surrealism. This reapproach comes in the wake of the centenary of André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto,” which museums across Europe, Latin America and the U.S. have celebrated to reprise the story of modern and contemporary art. The details of these retellings—that is, the alternative histories they encompass, which invariably involve other influences, other artists and cultural agents, as well as other audiences—reshape the history of painting in the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean and beyond. The particulars of Tovar’s expanded narratives, along with the capacious stories animating Koyo Kouoh’s 61st International Art Exhibition In Minor Keys, stack up not just as tales from an underacknowledged past, they propose possible futures. “Iván Tovar: Le Retour marks both an artist’s long-overdue emergence on the global stage and a new chapter in our understanding of Surrealism. Tovar’s work takes Surrealism as a point of departure, working to articulate global ideas, symbols, and visual phenomena anew, and advancing ways of seeing that elevate a cultural position long considered peripheral. I am honored to bring this vision to Venice, where the conversation about the movements of people and ideas has never felt more urgent,” says curator Christian Viveros-Fauné.