The exhibition history of Dream represents the dominance of Irma Stern in the South African art world as well as her international stature and reputation. She participated in the Venice Biennale, the most prestigious art event in the world, an unprecedented four times in the 1950s, having been selected to represent South Africa in the first national pavilion in 1950 and again in 1952, 1954, and 1958. Selected for La Biennale in 1954, Dream was then exhibited at the famed Galerie Wolfgang Gurlitt in Munich the following year. It was Stern’s mentor Max Pechstein who had introduced her to his dealer Wolfgang Gurlitt, who mounted her first solo exhibition at his Berlin gallery in 1919. Stern would have been gratified that Gurlitt exhibited some of her best-known European contemporaries, including Henri Matisse and Oskar Kokoschka as well as Pechstein and other members of the Die Brücke group. It was a relationship she maintained for the rest of her career, holding further solo exhibitions at the Berlin gallery in 1923, 1927 and 1932, then in Munich 1955 and 1960.