It was an artistic movement that brought together artists, thinkers and researchers in hunt of sense of expression of the unconscious. They were searching for the definition of new aesthetic, new humankind and a new social order. Surrealists had their forerunners in Italian Metaphysical Painters (Giorgio de Chirico) in early 1910’s.
As the artistic movement, Surrealism came into being after the French poet Andre Breton 1924 published the first Manifeste du surrealisme. In this book Breton suggested that rational thought was repressive to the powers of creativity and imagination and thus inimical to artistic expression. An admirer of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the subconscious, Breton felt that contact with this hidden part of the mind could produce poetic truth.
The Surrealist art movement was dedicated to expressing the imagination in a method that was free from the control, convention, and reason. Surrealism began in the 1920’s and ended in the 1930’s. Surrealism was similar to Dadaism in that it was anti rationalist, but was different in that it was lighter in spirit. One of the major influences on the Surrealist movement was Freud’s model of the subconscious, and emerging theories on our perception of reality. Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by Andre Breton who created a Manifesto of Surrealism. The aim of the movement was an attempt to discover a super-reality by interpreting dream and reality together; two conditions that often contradict one another. In essence, Surrealists love incongruity, spontaneity, and the randomness of life. Famous Surrealist artists include Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, MC Escher, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, and Man Ray.
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