from 1924
Dates overlap and vary by place; they are not strict boundaries.
Movement
A movement, period and school are different kinds of historical grouping.
Associations are checked against museum records rather than assigned from dates alone.
Why it emerged
After World War I, Surrealist writers and artists sought to challenge the authority of rational thought and conventional morality. André Breton’s 1924 manifesto connected the project with dreams and psychoanalysis. Automatic procedures and unexpected juxtapositions offered ways to loosen conscious control; political disagreements and migration later made the movement increasingly international.
Key artists and contributions
Max Ernst
Used collage and texture-based procedures to generate unfamiliar images.
Salvador Dalí
Painted impossible encounters with painstakingly convincing illusion.
Meret Oppenheim
Transformed familiar objects through disquieting material substitutions.
What changed afterwards
Its experiments with chance, objects and unconscious association informed later abstraction, photography and installation. Surrealist methods also entered advertising and film, where strange combinations could serve very different commercial purposes.
Sources and further reading
Original educational overview, informed by the resources below. Artist examples are selective; they are not a complete membership list.
Representative works at the museum
These are museum reference entries. Follow the links to view the works; images are not reproduced here. These entries are not included in the comparison timeline.
Object
Meret Oppenheim · 1936
The Museum of Modern Art
View at museum ↗Movement and school labels are interpretive tools. Individual works can cross boundaries, and an artist’s entire career is not assigned to a single movement.