2. CONTEXT OF SURREALISM
• 1920s
• Also called the ‘Roaring Twenties’
• End of the First World War 1918
• Great depression in 1929
• Has its roots in late WWI in Paris France and takes its’ name
form a French play from 1917.
3. WHAT IS SURREALISM ABOUT?
• Surrealism is a cultural movement that was formed in the first few years of
the 1920s. Surrealism as an art style is all about creating
something, whether it be a painting or a sculpture, that would surprise
anyone who looked at it. Founder André Breton believed that above
all, surrealism was a revolutionary movement. It spread around the
world, affecting the film, music, visual arts and literature of many
countries.
• The aim of the movement was an attempt to discover a super-reality by
combining dreams and reality together
• Surrealism is a word made up by a man by the name of Guillaume
Apollinaire, who made a play featuring surrealism called Les Mamelles de
Tirésias.
4. • Salvador Dali was born on 11th May 1904
• He died on the 23rd January 1989, aged 84
• He was a skilled draftsman, and he was
known for his striking surrealist work
• His best-know artwork was The Persistence
of Memory
• Dali supported Franco’s regime in
Spain, although in his youth he thought
of himself as an anarchist and a
communist
5. • Max Ernst was born in 1891, and died at the
age of 84 in 1976
• He fought in World War 1 in both the Eastern
and Western fronts
• Ernst created a surrealist technique named frottage.
In this technique the artist takes a pencil or a drawing
tool and makes a rubbing over a textured surface
• One of Max Ernst’s most famous paintings is Two
Children are Threatened by a Nightingale
6. • René Magritte was born in 1898, and died at the
age of 68 in 1967
• René Magritte’s first surreal painting, The Lost
Jockey, was a failure. Disappointed, Magritte
moved to Paris, became friends with André Breton
and joined the surrealist group
• One of Magritte’s most famous paintings is The Son of
Man, painted in 1964
