Surrealism
1924
What Is Surrealism? How Art Illustrates the Unconscious
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 “Lullaby of Uncle Magritte” (2016)
intriguing depictions of people and animals. Michael Cheval
One of the most important and
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
subversive movements of the 20th
1943
Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012)
Tate century, flourished particularly in the
1920s and 1930s and provided a radical
alternative to the rational and formal
qualities of Cubism. Unlike Dada, from
which in many ways it sprang, it
emphasized the positive rather than the
nihilistic. Surrealism sought access to the
subconscious and to translate this flow of
thought into terms of art. Originally a
literary movement, it was famously
defined by the poet André Breton in
the First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924):
'SURREALISM, noun, masc. Pure
psychic automatism by which it is
intended to express either verbally or in
writing the true function of thought.
Thought dictated in the absence of all
control exerted by reason, and outside all
aesthetic or moral preoccupations.'
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 20th-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.”
Early Surrealists challenged the constraints of consciousness and rationality in order to liberate the unconscious mind—a
“superior reality,” as Breton called it.
A fundamental aspect of the Surrealist movement is a mode of expression called “automatism,” which involves the act of
automatic or uncensored recording of the thoughts and images that emerge into an artist’s mind. With a focus on tapping
into involuntary thought processes and interpreting dreams, Surrealist artwork is not limited to a specific artistic style or
technique.
Throughout the 1920s, visual artists continued exploring Surrealist concepts in art, seeking complete creative freedom.
The first-ever Surrealism exhibition, titled “La Peinture Surrealiste,” took place in 1925 at the Galerie Pierre in Paris,
firmly establishing the visual component of the movement.
Though the Surrealist movement in Europe dissipated at the start of World War II, many Surrealist artists relocated to the
United States where the movement was reignited, influencing renowned visual artists throughout the 20th century.
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor,
printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One
of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist
movement, the invention of constructed sculpture and for the wide variety of styles that he
helped develop and explore.
Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and
the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by
German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later
periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period
(1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909),
Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the
Crystal period.
Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his
work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often
combines elements of his earlier styles.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(The Young Ladies of Avignon), 1907
Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting
confrontational manner and none is conventionally
feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and
are rendered with angular and disjointed body
shapes. The far left figure exhibits facial features and
dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two
adjacent figures are shown in the Iberian style of
Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are
shown with African mask-like features. The ethnic
primitivism evoked in these masks, according to
Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original
artistic style of compelling, even savage force."
Guernica 1937
Pablo Picasso
Likely Picasso’s most famous work, Guernica is certainly the artist’s most powerful
political statement. The work was painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's
devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during the
Spanish Civil War; unremorsefully displaying the tragedies of war and the suffering it
inflicted upon individuals, especially innocent civilians. By using a palette of gray,
black, and white, Picasso immediately evokes a serious tone and emulates the cover of
newspapers published after the bombing – how Picasso first learned of the atrocity.
The scene depicted is incredibly multifaceted, taking place within a room where, on
the left, a wide-eyed bull stands over a woman cradling the corpse of her child in her
arms. The center is occupied by a horse falling in agony as if it had just been stabbed;
a large gaping wound being a major point of focus in the painting. Under the horse is a
dead, dismembered soldier; his hand on a severed arm still grasping a shattered sword
from which a flower grows. Sitting in the open palm of the dead soldier is a stigma, a
symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A light bulb blazes in the
shape of an evil eye over the suffering horse's head: a bare bulb in a torturer’s cell. To
the right is another woman, running frantically in hysteria. The painting is incredibly
layered, symbolic, and has since gained monumental status, becoming a perpetual
reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace;
essentially bringing the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention.
Corrida: la mort du torero
(Bullfight: Death of the Bullfighter), 1933
Picasso’s experiments with color
burst onto the canvas in full
technicolor glory as he returns to his
favorite artistic theme and his own,
personal passion: the bullfight.
With its heavy brushstrokes, the
central images of the panicking grey
horse act as an imposing tonal
contrast to exaggerate the use of
color that capture the moment of the
bullfighter's death. Viewers hardly
notice the horse is dying due to the
entrails being grey in tone. The
absence of gore from horse and man
is taken up by the red cape, circling
in a bloody cloud between the bull
and the fighter. The vibrant, emotive
use of color creates a powerful
Nu couche (Reclining Nude) 1932
The erotic and curvilinear style of
Reclining Nude is emblematic of
Picasso’s work during his romance
with Marie-Thérèse Walter which
lasted from 1927 to 1935. Here
Marie is sleeping, which Picasso
described as the most intimate
way to represent his lover. Picasso
creates light with layers of matte
white paint applied on Marie’s
body. The sensual nature of the
work is exemplified through
Picasso’s use of organic forms.
Head of a Woman Femme au fauteuil rouge
(Tête de femme) Head, 1938 (Woman in a Red Armchair)
Pablo Picasso
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978)
was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he
founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the
surrealists. His best-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows,
mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective. His imagery reflects his affinity for
the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and of Friedrich Nietzsche, and for the
mythology of his birthplace.
After 1919, he became a critic of modern art, studied traditional painting
techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently
revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.
Le mauvais génie d'un roi Great Metaphysical Interior, 1917
(The Evil Genius of a King)
Piazza d'Italia by Giorgio de Chirico, 1952
Il grande metafisico
(The Grand Metaphysician), 1917
Man Ray
Man Ray (1890-1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career
in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements,
although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of
media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his
pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He
is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in
reference to himself.
Rayograph (The Kiss), 1922
Man Ray
This is one of Man Ray's earliest
Rayograms, a process by which objects are
laid directly on to a photo-sensitive paper
then exposed to light. To create this
particular picture, he transferred the
silhouette of a pair of hands to the
photographic paper then repeated the
procedure with a pair of heads (his and his
then lover's, Kiki de Montparnasse).
Rayograms gave Man Ray an opportunity to
be in his work and react to his creations
right away by adding layer upon layer. He
used inanimate objects as well as his own
body to create his earlier pictures, and the
pictures sometimes have an
autobiographical quality, with many of his
photographs portraying his lovers.
Residency: Man Ray Paintings - Melt
Joan Miró
Another notable name, once described by Breton as “the most Surrealist of us all,”
is Joan Miró (1893-1983). Though Miró did not proclaim himself a Surrealist, he
was undoubtedly influenced by the movement in much of his work.
Miró was famous for his works across numerous mediums, drawing inspiration
from Catalan folk art and the art of children. He emphasized vibrant colors and
obscure shapes to invoke emotion and wonder in his audience.
Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a
sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a
manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s
onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of
supporting bourgeois society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting"
in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
The Farm
Joan Miro
A dramatically tilted picture plane presents
the viewer with a glimpse of a busy Spanish
masia or "family farm." Miró wrote of this
work, "The Farm was a résumé of my entire
life in the country. I wanted to put
everything I loved about the country into
that canvas-from a huge tree to a tiny snail."
The artist spent sometimes as many as eight
hours a day for nine months working on this
painting, for which he then struggled to find
a buyer in a Parisian modern art market
crazy for Cubism.
The Ear of Grain
Joan Miro
"The Ear of Grain" is an early work in
which Miró demonstrates his close study of
everyday objects, in some ways a by-
product of study in a traditional academic
setting. As a young artist, Miró was
influenced by the painstaking, detailed
realism of the Dutch Masters. The attention
he gives to objects is reflected later in the
care Miró takes with constructing the clean-
edged, biomorphic forms of his trademark
style.
North South The Farmer
Joan Miro Joan Miro
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol
(1904-1989), known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for
his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his
work.
Salvador Dalí is one of the first names that comes to mind when discussing
Surrealist artists. Like many Surrealists, Dalí utilized various mediums to create his
iconic dreamlike, hallucinatory visuals including etching, lithography, and painting.
Breton described Dalí’s art as “a retrograde craft with the most extreme inventions
of modern culture,” highlighting Dalí’s emblematic artistic style that provoked his
viewers to explore literature, religious concepts, and more.
One of the emblematic Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory
paintings of this period is The Persistence of
Memory, a particular depiction of the
inevitable passing of time. An anecdote
behind it tells that Dali was inspired by a
piece of cheese he found melted overnight,
transformed due to the hours of standing out.
The painting has proven to be both shocking
and successful, being considered one of
Salvador Dali emblems. He continued to
explore the innermost fears and repressions
of a man through a highly contemplative, but
still exceptionally aesthetized style.
Perhaps the most iconic Salvador Dali
surrealistic painting of all, it embodies the
duality of softness and hardness, symbolizing
the relativity of space and time, largely
leaning onto Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in
essence, although Dali has revoked the
Camembert cheese melting in the sun when
talking about this piece.
This fantastic painting is particularly
interesting, as it exploits double
imagery, providing the depiction itself
with layered meaning. Metamorphosis,
surprising juxtapositions of objects and
shifting appearances are some of the
characteristics of Dali’s surrealistic
paintings.
Apparition of face and a Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1938
The face of war, 1940
The agony of war was a
great inspiration to Dali.
He believed his paintings
to be premonitions of war,
and this particular work
was created in between the
Spanish Civil War and
Second World War.
Galatea of the spheres, 1952
A portrait of Dali’s wife Gala, depicted through an array of
globular shapes, inspired by science, but resembling a
portrait of a Madonna, it lifts Galathea above the world of
tangible into an upper, ethereal sphere.
Geopoliticus Child Watching the
Birth of the New Man is a 1943
painting by Salvador Dalí. The
painting was done during Dalí's stay
in the United States from 1940 to
1948. It is said to be one of his most
recognizable paintings. It is of a man
scrambling out of an egg while an
adult woman and child look on.[1]
The work is currently on view at the
Salvador Dalí Museum in St.
Petersburg, Florida.[2]
Anatole Krasnyansky “Street Quartet,” Anatole Krasnyansky
Another modern take on Surrealist art is seen in the work of
Anatole Krasnyansky (Born 1930). Though originally
gaining success for his stunning architectural landscape
paintings, Krasnyansky developed a surreal style after first
seeing the rock band KISS. The rock group was notorious
for its iconic face paint, elaborate costumes, and intense rock
performances involving pyrotechnics, smoke, and flashing
lights.
This moving experience prompted Krasnyansky to begin
illustrating his emotion through his art with masked
characters, reminiscent of the focus on the automatic
recording of thoughts that shaped the Surrealist paintings of
the 1920s.
While Krasnyansky’s shapes are decidedly distinct, the
masked figures represent “a multiplicity of faces” that the
artist says represents how people adapt and change in
different situations.
It’s not surprising that Krasnyansky’s
earliest paintings were inspired by his
training in architecture, art history, and
restoration. Krasnyansky’s cityscapes
reveal his deep experience as a draftsman,
his brilliance as an architect, and his facile
command of the unforgiving technique of
watercolor.
“Nostalgic Dream” (2016)
Anatole Krasnyansky
“Swaying to the Music” (2015)
Anatole Krasnyansky
Krasnyansky has also sought ways of fusing the two predominant
styles of his art into unique conceptions. These works display his
figures inside architectural interiors with lavish cityscapes seen from
the windows or figures flying above complex architectural
structures.
Most recently, he has begun to populate interiors with modeled
figures (akin to the notion of sculpture) in various poses with
elaborate vistas of architectural designs in the distance. Today,
Krasnyansky’s works—both his cityscapes and expressive Surrealist
figures—have been exhibited around the world. Krasnyansky also
designed the Greco-Roman façade for Park West Gallery’s
headquarters in Southfield, Michigan, in 2001.
An exhaustive catalog raisonné of Krasnyansky’s body of work was
published in the book “Krasnyansky” in 2013. The book chronicles
Krasnyansky’s life and artwork, features hundreds of images, and
includes original commentary from the artist, Eleanor M. Hight,
Ph.D., and Morris Shapiro, Gallery Director, Park West Gallery.
Michael Cheval
Contemporary artist Michael Cheval (born
1956) demonstrates how the Surrealism movement of the
1920s has influenced modern-day art with his
imaginative “Absurdist” paintings that grew in
popularity in the early 2000s. Like many of the early
Surrealists, Cheval uses music and poetry to inspire the
subjects he paints in his mesmerizing, often metaphorical
paintings.
“Absurdity, like any other genre, has its own rules. But, it
implies everything that is outlying of common rules and
boundaries,” Cheval says. “‘Absurdism’ is an attempt to
understand our life the way it truly is.”
“Inspiration” (2015), Michael Cheval
“Enigma” (2015), Michael Cheval
The question of nature versus nurture is one deserving of
thought. In exploring the question with this artwork, Cheval
draws upon his Russian heritage and uses the martyoshka doll
concept. In his words:
“A man is a nature’s child, her essential part. All processes,
occurring in nature, happen with man as well. From birth to
death – bloom, maturity, fading. And again there is birth,
possibly in a different appearance. Do former generations
remain in consecutive ones? Do children repeat their parents?
The model of ‘matryoshka’ best illustrates this concept.”
“Discord of Analogy” (2015), Michael Cheval
This artwork, depicting Mozart with a
companion, can work if it is right-side up or
upside down. Like his other works, Cheval notes
that nothing is by accident in his art, including
the topsy-turvy design. He even encourages
collectors to see if they prefer this work upside
down:
“Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart served as an
inspiration for this painting. Like many other
creators, he always sensed misunderstanding
from people, even those close to him. Creator
and solitude are kindred concepts. Creator
always lives in another dimension. Hard to
decide whose dimension is right. Mozart, sitting
on the floor, or his companion, seated on the
ceiling? Try to turn the painting upside-down
and now she will be seated by the piano on the
floor, and he – on the ceiling. Whatever feels
closer. Whichever one likes.”
“Evolution” (2015), Michael Cheval
As the title suggests, Cheval draws upon the
theory of evolution for this artwork. The
imagery is reminiscent of illustrations
depicting the evolution of humans, but
Cheval’s themes go beyond science:
“According to Darwin’s theory, everything
evolves from primitive to complex. Actually
everything in our life is a subject to this law.
Social and personal relationships grow and
develop complication. More developed
systems control a primitive one. This can be
illustrated by the example of the puppet
theater, where a human controls a beautiful
doll with a porcelain head, which in turn
controls a wooden doll, and it manages a rag
doll, which resembles a man. Doesn’t it look
the same in our society?”
