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Surrealism
Surrealism is an art movement spanning between 1920 to 1960 -
First use of term "Surrealism"
The word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias) -
World War One ends
World War I scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and many became involved with another movement named Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and middle-class values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world. Dada protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and artworks. After the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. -
Surrealist Films
Surrealist rejection of rational value and the liberation of unconscious mind had a major influenced films, animation and television. Surrealist films share an attitude of liberation from the censorship of the conscious mind. Artists who produced such films included Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel -
Surrealist Manifesto
More artists and writers were attracted to the new movement. They believe that automatism was a better tactic for social change than the Dada attack on existing values. The group included Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, André Breton, Joan Miró and Marcel Duchamp. The group aimed to change human experience. They wanted to free people from restrictive social habits. In 1924 they declared their philosophy in the first "Surrealist Manifesto -
Freud, cafe meetings and automatic drawings
The movement in the mid-1920s was characterised by cafes meetings where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing (pictured). Freud's work with dream analysis and the unconscious was important to the Surrealists in liberating imagination. They accepted idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. -
La Peinture Surrealiste Exhibition
Artists Miró and Masson applied Surrealism to painting, leading to the first Surrealist exhibition in 1925. Displayed works included Masson, Man Ray, Klee, Miró, and others. The show confirmed Surrealism’s place in the visual arts. -
Galerie Surréaliste
Galerie Surréaliste opened on March 26, 1926 with an exhibition by Man Ray Man Ray was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris. A significant contributor to Surrealist movement, he is best known for his avant-garde photography. Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He is noted for his photograms, which he renamed "rayographs" after himself. -
The Treachery of Images
The Treachery of Images is a painting by the artist René Magritte. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" French for "This is not a pipe." The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe. Magritte became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His intended goal for his work was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings. -
The Persistence of Memory
Painted by artist Salvador Dalí, this is one of his most recognizable works. Dali aimed to expose psychological reality by stripping ordinary objects of their significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal understanding, in order to create empathy from the viewer.
Persistence of Memory employs highly exact and realist painting techniques to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness. -
London Surrealist Exhibition
Throughout the 1930s, Surrealism continued to become more visible to the public at large. The London exhibition was a high water mark of the period and became the model for international exhibitions. Dalí and Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement. Dalí joined the group in 1929, and participated in the rapid establishment of the visual style between 1930 and 1935. -
Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism
Museum of Modern Art in New York shows the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism -
New International Surrealist Exhibition
A new International Surrealist Exhibition was held at the Beaux-arts Gallery, Paris, with more than 60 artists, and showed around 300 paintings, objects and photographs. The Surrealists wanted an exhibition which would be a creative act and called on Marcel Duchamp. The main hall was designed as a cave with coal bags suspended from the ceiling. Patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art. Much to the Surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers -
Peggy Guggenheim
During the 1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important American art collector, married Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as Yves Tanguy and the British artist John Tunnard. -
World War Two ends
World War II created havoc for European artists. Many fled to North America. The New York art scene was already grappling with Surrealism and artists like Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell converged with the surrealist artists, albeit with some reservations. Ideas about the unconscious were adopted. By 1945, the taste of the American avant-garde swung towards Abstract Expressionism, backed by key trendsetters including Peggy Guggenheim, and Clement Greenberg. -
Death of Andre Breton
There is no clear consensus about the end, or if there was an end, to the Surrealist movement. Some art historians suggest that World War II effectively disbanded the movement. However, art historian Sarane Alexandrian states, "the death of André Breton in 1966 marked the end of Surrealism as an organised movement." Breton is known best as the principal initiator of Surrealism. His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto
