Surrealism was an art movement that began in the 1920s in Paris and was influenced by Dada and psychoanalysis. It aimed to express unconscious thoughts through automatic techniques and dream imagery. The founder, André Breton, advocated liberating imagination from rational constraints. Surrealists drew inspiration from the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and aimed to challenge norms of perception through juxtaposing unexpected images. Major surrealist artists included René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and Hans Arp who created works exploring dreams, desires, and the unconscious through figurative and abstract styles.

1. 5. SURREALISM

2. 5.1. Main characteristics
Surrealism was an art movement of the inter-war
years, and the last major art movement to be
associated with Paris.
Its name derived from the phrase Drame
surrealiste, the sub-title of a 1917 play by the
writer and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880-1918).
Surrealism evolved out of the nihilistic "anti-art"
Dada movement, most of whose members became
surrealists.
While Dada was revolutionary, Surrealism was less
overtly political and advocated a more positive Surrealists aimed to generate
philosophy. an entirely new set of imagery
Summed up by André Breton as "thought expressed by liberating the creative
in the absence of any control exerted by reason, power of the unconscious
and outside all moral and aesthetic mind (dreams, hallucinations,
considerations.“ automatic or random image
generation).
Initially, the main focus of the movement was
literature but this rapidly involved painting,
sculpture and other forms of contemporary visual
art as cinema.

4. 5.2. Philosophical Influences: Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a Viennese neurologist who founded
the psychoanalysis.
Breton and other surrealists were highly impressed with Freud's insights
into the unconscious, which they thought would be a major source of
untapped pictures and imagery. They used his theories to clear away
boundaries between fantasy and reality, and to address a number of
disquieting drives as fear, desire and eroticization.

5. Our mind according to
Freud…

6. 5.3. Literature and manifestos: André Breton.
Who Founded Surrealism?
The writer André Breton (1896-1966), nicknamed "the Pope of Surrealism", was the
movement's founder and chief theorist.
He introduced and defined the new style in his initial 1924 manifesto (Manifeste du
Surrealisme) and later in his painting bulletin (Surrealisme et la Peinture).
Breton, who was an ex dadaist, deplored the nihilistic and destructive character of Dada,
nevertheless he built on many Dada ideas to create a movement with a coherent though
doctrinaire philosophy
Breton's overall aim was in fact highly revolutionary. He aimed at nothing less than a
total transformation of the way people thought by breaking down the barriers between
their inner and outer worlds, and changing the way they perceived reality, he intended
to liberate the unconscious, reconcile it with the conscious.

7. Max Erns, «The meeting of friends» 1922

8. 5.4. Artistic influences: Other painters toked as model by the Surrealism.
2. Any manifestation of European artistic trend in touch with obsessive and eccentric
subjects:
Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)
“The Garden of Earthly Delights” 1480-1490

11. «The Haywain Triptych» 1502

12. Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)
«The nigthmare» 1781

13. engravings of prisons
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
(1720-1778)
« Carceri d’invenzione» 1745
Plate 1 Title

15. «Beata Beatrice» «Ancient of Days» 1794
1864-1870
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) William Blake (1757-1827)

16. Gustave Moreau (1828-1898)
“Oedipus and the Sphinx”, 1794

17. Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)
Metaphysical school of painting

18. 3. And DADA, of course...
«Parade amoureuse» Francis Picabia 1917

19. 5.5.Figurative Surrealism
«The Lovers» 1928
«Gonconda» 1953
Renne Magritte (1898-1967)
The Empire of Lights. 1954

20. «The sleepingVenus» 1944
Paul Delvaux (1897-1994)

21. Marx Ernst (1891-1976)
«The bride’s dress»

22. 5.6. Abstract Surrealism
« La famille en état de métamorphose » 1929
«La belle italien» 1942
André Masson (1896-1987)

23. Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)
«Indefinite Divisibility» 1942

24. « Objets placés
selon les lois du
hasard » 1926
Hans /Jean Arp (1886-1966)