Published 2022-12-10

Surrealism 00

Surrealism is a direction that tends toward spontaneous, non-rational recording of subconscious experiences.

Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait with Orthopedic Brace, 1938

Surrealist painting was significantly influenced by the psychoanalytic method of S. Freud, the paintings of H. Bosch, G. Arcimboldo, F. Goya, and O. Redon, symbolism, Dadaism, and metaphysical painting.

Rene Magritte, Philosopher's Lamp, 1936

The most significant representatives of surrealism in painting are P. Klee, M. Ernst, J. Arp, J. Miró, A. Masson, Y. Tanguy, S. Dal, R. Magritte, P. Delvaux, F. Picabia, and M. Duchamp; in sculpture, A. Giacometti; and in photography, Man Ray.

Max Ernst, The Robing of the Bride, 1940

The first exhibitions of surrealist painters were held in 1925 and 1926 in Paris. Surrealists' works differ from each other thematically, stylistically, morphologically, and aesthetically.

Salvador Dali, Diurnal Fantasies, 1932

Some artists, such as Ernst, Masson, and Miró, experimented with different new techniques (frottage, the process of making prints by rubbing a pencil on a piece of paper or canvas laid over a worn floorboard, a pile of tangled ropes, etc.; grattage, scratching on a painter's canvas; collage and collage-photographs) with which they tried to include automatism in the creation of a work of art.

Kay Sage, A Little Later, 1938

Others, such as Magritte and Dal (representatives of veristic surrealism), painted with photographic accuracy in irrational-visionary compositions in which fantastic landscapes, human-animal likenesses, or unusual objects in unexpected relationships appear as the main element.

Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936