Art Movement - Surrealism

December 20, 2020

Art Movement - Surrealism

SURREALISM

Surrealism is more than an artistic style—it’s an artistic movement.

Unlike other creative movements, which can be characterized by themes of imagery, color choices, or techniques, defining Surrealist art is slightly harder to do.

Surrealist artists—like Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, or Michael Cheval, among many others—seek to explore the unconscious mind as a way of creating art, resulting in dreamlike, sometimes bizarre imagery across endless mediums. The core of Surrealism is a focus on illustrating the mind’s deepest thoughts automatically when they surface. This thought process for creating art known as “automatism.”

Over the years, Surrealism has resulted in a fascinating collection of artwork ranging from mythical landscapes, to obscure sculpture arrangements, to intriguing depictions of people and animals.

What is Surrealism and how did it begin?

The poet Guilliame Apollinaire first coined the term “Surreal” in reference to the idea of an independent reality, existing “beneath” our conscious reality.

But the Surrealist movement initially surfaced in 1924 when French poet André Breton published his “Manifesto of Surrealism,” influenced by the theories and writings on the unconscious mind by psychologist Sigmund Freud, the groundbreaking studies of Carl Jung, and the early 20^th-century Dada movement.

While Surrealism started as a literary movement in the prose and poetry of Breton and others, visual artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp embraced Surrealism and were recognized in Breton’s 1925 publication, “La Révolution Surréaliste.”

these are some artworks..