Surrealism Art Movement

Surrealism Art Movement, History, Surrealist Oil Paintings & Artists.

The Surrealism Art Movement was born in Paris and theorized by Andre Breton, Surrealism was a new art movement defined by its exploration of the innermost recesses of the psyche. The Surrealist painter let his brush flow over the canvas, allowing his deepest impulses and desires to reveal themselves, in the Freudian processes of “ automatic writing”. The works of Joan Miro and André Masson are good examples of this process. A more figurative current was represented by Balthus, Dali, and Delvaux, who, influenced by metaphysical painting, created absurd, disturbing compositions with objects taken from everyday life. Surrealism oil paintings featured a few telltale signs. These titles are misleading, never describing the subject matter. Legible symbols of the illusion and ambiguity of the painting itself. A betrayal of reality, a parallel universe where nothing is as it seems. And finally, when people began to suffer from a loss of individual identity and the monotonous banality of everyday life, Surrealism came along to add some thought-provoking excitement to the world with a worldwide art movement of pure fantasy.

It is an art that is fun to pick apart and seek hidden elements.

The term "metaphysical," taken from ancient Greek, means "beyond real things." Metaphysical paintings portray evocative, unreal situations based on the improbable, elusive, and ambiguous combinations of objects, landscapes, light, and perspective. This type of painting emerged from a chance meeting during World War I in a military hospital in Ferrera, Italy. Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinino, Carlo Carra nd Filippo De Pisis were all patients at the same time. This meeting led to the development of an artistic and intellectual movement that sought to represent situations of stillness and reflection in direct opposition to the dynamic and sometimes incoherent activism of the Futurists.

The Dada movement originated in 1916 in Zurich, where many artists and intellectuals had sought refuge during the war. Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades led Dada to propose provocative, total defiance of all values and models in the name of completely unrestrained creative freedom. The movement spread throughout Europe, from Paris to Berlin, and the United States, adopting a wide variety of languages and means of expression. Nonetheless, by 1922, it was already in decline. Many artists slipped into Surrealism, the grand finale of the avant-garde era.

The art world is still divided today about whether René Magritte should be considered "merely" a phenomenal creator of images or one of the most representative masters of twentieth-century art history. The public is not in doubt. The expressive energy of Magritte's images, so simple to recognize, however difficult to comprehend, has made him one of the best-loved, most reproduced, and well-known painters of all time.

When Magritte first worked in advertising—something that is reflected in all his work—but when Magritte discovered the Metaphysical canvases of de Chirico, which ended up being an incredible revelation—from then on, he depicted outlandish juxtapositions of objects, landscapes, and people, painted with absolute, still clarity. He moved to Paris and became a close acquaintance with Dali, participating in the Surrealist movement and even composing articles and essays. During this period, Magritte continued to observe recent masters like Seurat, as well as masters of fifteenth-century Italian painting. By the time he returned to Brussels in 1930, his art style, based on opposition and enigmatic presence, was consolidated.

Surrealism inspired other art movements, literature, and philosophy and was one of the foundations of Modernism. Two famous artists that were centuries ahead of their time and can be considered surrealists are Hieronymus Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Today, surrealistic works are fun to pick apart and to seek hidden elements and meaning in. In their day, they were somewhat unnerving and forced new perspectives that hadn’t been dealt with.

Surrealist artists: Jean Arp, Hans Bellmer, Leonora Carrington, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Maurits Cornelius Escher, Alberto Giacometti, George Grosz, Frida Kahlo, Mati Klarwein, Roberto Matta, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy, and Pavel Thelitchew.