Born in Montreal on June 30, 1932, Alan Glass began his artistic training at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal in 1949, under the guidance of Alfred Pellan. In 1952, a French scholarship enabled him to continue his studies in Paris, where he attended the Beaux-Arts, the École du Musée de l’Homme, and the Sorbonne. There he produced automatic drawings that caught the attention of André Breton, who, together with Benjamin Péret, organized his first solo exhibition in 1958 at the Galerie Le Terrain Vague.
Linked to the Surrealist circle (Aube Breton Elléouët, Jean Benoît, Mimi Parent, Alejandro Jodorowsky), he discovered Mexico in 1962, a country where he settled in 1963. From the 1960s onwards, he abandoned drawing to devote himself to “assemblage boxes,” veritable surrealist reliquaries filled with objects gleaned over time and orchestrated in a poetics of superimposition and wonder. His art also draws on visual references from Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, and Henri Rousseau. His work is characterized by a remarkable diversity of media, ranging from collages to watercolors, engravings, paintings, and handcrafted objects.
His major exhibitions include one at the Antonio Souza Gallery (Mexico City, 1967), two retrospectives at the Museo de Arte Moderno (1976, 2008), and presentations in Paris and Montreal (Galerie 1900–2000, Galerie Gilles Corbeil). In 2025, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will dedicate a major retrospective to him, Worlds and Wonders: Alan Glass's Surrealist Journey, in partnership with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes.
His works are included in prestigious collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d'art moderne de Paris, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Alan Glass passed away in Mexico City on January 16, 2023.
