One of the most profound shifts in the history of modernism took place in New York City in the 1930s and '40s as artists from Europe took refuge in the United States. The radical forms of figurative art they brought with them prompted and competed against an impulse toward abstraction among American artists.

By the time this period of ferment was over, New York had displaced Paris as the main site of activity for modern art, and a celebrated new movement, Abstract Expressionism, had been born. Many accounts of this period summarize it as the pre-history of Abstract Expressionism, as if its developments had progressed toward a pre-ordained end. To the artists who lived through these years, though, nothing was settled or decided.

Viewing this brief but crucial era from within as a fascinating moment in its own right, the Menil Collection will revisit these years as the period of Late Surrealism, in an exhibition on view from May 24 through Aug. 25.