Surrealism Art and Artists

In art, Surrealism means making images that release the unconscious mind: dreams, chance and strange, unexpected combinations. The word, suggesting “beyond reality,” was coined by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917, and André Breton defined the movement in his Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. Tate says its artists look for magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, and the Getty's art vocabulary describes it as fusing reality with the instinctual, the subconscious and the realm of dreams.

Sources: Tate: Surrealism · Getty AAT: Surrealist

Surrealist art has no single look, but it always draws on the unconscious mind. Tate Modern says some Surrealists painted the imagery of dreams in highly realistic detail, while others used “automatic” techniques to make abstract works without planning a theme or correcting mistakes. Typical traits are dreamlike, illogical scenes, ordinary objects in uncanny settings, and chance methods such as Max Ernst's frottage (rubbing) and grattage (scraping).

Sources: Tate Modern: International Surrealism · Tate: Automatism · Tate: The uncanny

The French poet André Breton started Surrealism when he published the Manifesto of Surrealism in Paris in 1924. Tate says Breton was strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud's ideas and defined Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism”: thought set down without any control by reason. Breton and other poets made the first automatic writings, and Max Ernst invented Surrealist collage, the first form of automatism in visual art.

Sources: Tate: Automatism · Tate: Surrealism

Surrealism began in Paris in 1924 with Breton's first manifesto, and the Getty's art vocabulary describes it as a movement centered mainly in Paris from the 1920s to the late 1940s. In November 1925 the Galerie Pierre in Paris showed La Peinture surréaliste, with works by Ernst, Klee, Masson, Miró, Man Ray and others. The movement soon became international: it came to London with the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936, and Mexico City held the International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1940. Tate Modern notes that Surrealism is now understood as a more open, shifting term.

Sources: Getty AAT: Surrealist · Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries: La peinture surréaliste, Galerie Pierre, 1925 (catalog) · Tate: Paul Nash (exhibition press release) · Art Institute of Chicago: Frida Kahlo's Month in Paris · Tate Modern: International Surrealism

The best-known Surrealist artists are Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Joan Miró, with the poet André Breton as the movement's leader. Tate's guide also names Yves Tanguy, Paul Nash, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Eileen Agar and Wifredo Lam, and Paul Klee took part in the Surrealists' 1925 exhibition in Paris. Of these, only Klee (died 1940), Nash (1946) and Tanguy (1955) died early enough for their work to be public domain where copyright lasts 70 years after death.

Sources: Tate: Surrealism · Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries: La peinture surréaliste, Galerie Pierre, 1925 (catalog) · Guggenheim: Paul Klee, Red Balloon · Philadelphia Museum of Art (Google Arts & Culture)

Measured by the number of languages with an encyclopedia article about it, the best-known Surrealist painting is Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory (1931), at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with articles in 47 languages. Next come René Magritte's The Treachery of Images (1929), which the Los Angeles County Museum of Art calls a key Surrealist work, his The Son of Man (1964) and Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas (1939). Max Ernst's Celebes (1921) hangs at Tate Modern. All are still under copyright somewhere, so we name them but do not show them.

Sources: LACMA: René Magritte, The Treachery of Images · Tate: Max Ernst, 1891–1976 · Tate Modern: International Surrealism

Mostly not yet. Where copyright lasts 70 years after the artist's death, as in the European Union and Britain, works by artists who died in 1955 or earlier are free, but Magritte (died 1967), Ernst (1976), Miró (1983) and Dalí (1989) are still protected. In the United States, works published before 1931 are public domain. So we offer only works made in 1930 or earlier by artists who died by 1955, such as Paul Klee's Fish Magic (1925) and Yves Tanguy's paintings of 1929 and 1930.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain · Tate: Surrealism · Philadelphia Museum of Art: Fish Magic

Not as public domain images in most countries yet. Dalí died in 1989, so where copyright lasts 70 years after death his paintings stay protected until the end of 2059. In the United States, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931, can enter the public domain on January 1, 2027 at the earliest, since works published in 1931 are protected for 95 years. Magritte's, Ernst's and Miró's paintings are protected in the same way, so we name them but do not offer them as downloads.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain · Tate: Surrealism

André Breton claimed her as one, and she exhibited with the Surrealists, but her pictures grew out of her own life. Time magazine reported in 1938 that Kahlo had never known she was a Surrealist until Breton came to Mexico and told her so; Breton called her art “a ribbon around a bomb.” She traveled to Paris at his invitation in 1939 and showed in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Mexico City in 1940. Mexico protects her paintings until 2054, so we do not offer them.

Sources: Time: Bomb Beribboned (14 November 1938) · Art Institute of Chicago: Frida Kahlo's Month in Paris · Mexico: Ley Federal del Derecho de Autor, art. 29 (Spanish)

Female Surrealist artists include Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Eileen Agar, Claude Cahun and Frida Kahlo. Tate tells how Carrington, Varo and the photographer Kati Horna found refuge in Mexico City during the Second World War and made kitchens, homes and gardens strange and otherworldly in their work. Most of these artists died long after 1955, so their work is still under copyright; Kahlo and Cahun died in 1954, but Mexico protects Kahlo's paintings for 100 years.

Sources: Tate: Surrealism · Tate: Surreal friends (Carrington, Varo, Horna) · Mexico: Ley Federal del Derecho de Autor, art. 29 (Spanish)

Dada came first: it began in Zurich during the First World War as a satirical, nonsensical protest against the war, and Tate says it eventually formed the basis of Surrealism in Paris after the war. Dada mocked art and middle-class values; Surrealism, launched by André Breton in 1924, turned inward, to dreams and the unconscious. Some artists belonged to both: Tate Modern shows Man Ray's Cadeau, made at the height of Paris Dada, as a forerunner of the Surrealist object.

Sources: Tate: Dada · Tate: Surrealism · Tate Modern: International Surrealism

Metaphysical art (pittura metafisica) is the Italian movement of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, who painted eerie, empty arcaded squares where statues and objects meet in strange juxtapositions. Tate says it shaped the dreamlike side of Surrealist painting, above all Max Ernst's, and Tate Modern notes that the Surrealists enthusiastically embraced de Chirico's early works. De Chirico died in 1978, so his paintings stay under copyright in Europe until the end of 2048 and are not shown here.

Sources: Tate: Metaphysical Art · Tate Modern: International Surrealism

Automatism means making art without conscious control, so that images come straight from the unconscious mind. Tate traces it to Freud's use of free association and automatic drawing, which strongly influenced André Breton. Ernst, Miró and André Masson developed forms of automatic drawing and painting, and Ernst used rubbing (frottage) and scraping (grattage) to bring chance textures into his pictures. Tate notes that automatism later played a part in the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and others.

Sources: Tate: Automatism · Tate: Abstract expressionism

Tate Modern in London shows Surrealism in its International Surrealism room, with works by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Nash and others, and its exhibition Frida: The Making of an Icon runs until January 3, 2027. The Persistence of Memory is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Treachery of Images at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has Klee's Fish Magic and Dalí's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.

Sources: Tate Modern: International Surrealism · Tate Modern: Frida: The Making of an Icon · LACMA: René Magritte, The Treachery of Images · Philadelphia Museum of Art: Fish Magic