AM-130: Surrealism

Surrealism

Originated in the late 1910s and early ’20s as a literary movement – Still important today

• Pure Psychic Automatism, proposing to express either verbally, in writing or any other manner, the real functioning of thought.

Automatism

Suspension of the Conscious Mind to release Unconscious Images

Leonora Carrington. Samain, 1951.

Salvador Dalí

1904 ~ 1989

Spanish

Considered one of the most important painters of the 20th century

Accomplished sculptor, film maker and photographer

Friends with Picasso, Schiaparelli, and Miró

Salvadore Dali, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening - Hope!, 1940

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1503–1515

Surrealism was

Liberation of our mind and the individual self and society

Achieved by:

Exercising the imaginative faculties of the “unconscious mind”

Attainment of a dream-like state different from or ultimately ‘truer’ than everyday reality.

Time had lost all meaning in the unconscious world

Elsa Schiaparelli

Leonor Fini, Two Women, 1939

Leonor Fini, Portrait of a woman with acanthus leaves, 1946

Leonor Fini, Self Portrait with Scorpion, 1938

Frida Kahlo,

The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)

1939

oil on canvas, 67-11/16 x 67-11/16″

(Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City)

Leonora Carrington

And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur

1953

MOMA, NYC

Rene Magritte

1898 ~ 1967

Belgian

Poster/advertisement designer

One of the most influential painters of the 20th Century.

Juxtaposed ordinary objects in an unusual context

Man in a Bowler Hat, 1964, 70×50 cm oil on canvas

Max Ernst

1891 ~ 1976

• German

• Associated with

Surrealism, Dadaismand Abstract Expressionism

Max Ernst – The Postman Cheval

Max Ernst

Woman, Old Man, and Flower

Max Ernst (German, 1891-1976)

The Robing of the Bride

1940

Oil on canvas

129.6 x 96.3cm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,

New York

Joan Miró

1893 ~ 1983

• Spanish

• He was a successful painter, ceramist & sculptor

• Rejected formal membership to any art movement

Marc Chagall

1887 ~ 1985

• Russian-Jewish

• Painter

• Surrealism, Dadaism and Abstract Expressionism

- Paris in 1923 and became a French citizen in 1937

• Fled France during WWII to Spain, then to the U.S. in 1941.

Marc Chagall, I and the Village