Surrealism

Surrealism is an artistic movement, born in France after the First World War. André Breton defined it in his manifesto of 1924. It tends to represent, abandoning any stylistic concerns, the inner life of the subconscious, the work of instinct that develops outside the bounds of reason. The surreal art is immediate, unreflective and is stripped of any reference to reality.

Surrealism took from Dadaism some photography and cinematography techniques as the manufacture of objects. Extended the principle to assemblage collage of incongruous objects as visible in the poems of Max Ernst. The latter invented frottage (drawings composed of rough surfaces rubbing against the paper or canvas) and applied in large painted works such as Natural History in Paris in 1926.

Other new activities created by Surrealism was called Exquisite Corpse, in which artists drew the different parts of a figure without seeing what he had done before passing the folded paper. The resulting creature could inspire Miró.

Salvador Dalí: 'The persistence of memory' (1931), Museum of Modern Art New York CIty

(in Spanish: 'Los relojes blandos')

Max Ernst: 'Triumph of Surrealism' (1937), private collection

Author: María Amo Alonso (3º ESO)