Surrealism

Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory
Surrealism was an artistic movement started in the early 20th century. The term itself comes from an amalgamation of the french sur (on top of, above, beyond) and the English word realism (The quality or fact of representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life).


It is a movement that rejects the previous desire in art to recreate life exactly as it appears to the human senses. It instead attempts to recreate the product of a irrational or unconscious mind. Surrealism is one of the branches of Modernism, a cultural phenomenon influenced by changing class structure, the industrial revolution, the great war and others. Surrealist artists were among the first to deal with more controversial cultural issues such as racism or sexism. Surrealism was not only a style of art but also a way of thinking and a political position. Many Surrealists rejected religion and were instead influenced by Freud. Surrealism is closely related to Dadaism.