Surrealism

Also called Surrealist art

Surrealism gained a defined program with André Breton’s 1924 manifesto, seeking connections between dreams, the unconscious and everyday reality. Automatic processes, chance and precisely painted improbable combinations made familiar things strange. Its unusual imagery served a broader exploration of thought and experience outside the control of conventional rationality.

Kind: Art movement
Period: 1924–1945
Lineage: Symbolism and Surrealism
Related styles: 3

Key traits

01Place familiar objects in unexpected relationships of scale, location or combination.
02Use spatial contradictions, transformations or category shifts to create dreamlike associations.
03Figurative approaches may render surfaces precisely, making impossible events seem tangible.
04Automatist approaches may develop images from free lines and accidental marks.

Prompt

[subject], Surrealism, dreamlike displacement, impossible spatial logic, sharply rendered objects, cool uncanny daylight, deep perspective

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Related styles

3 more styles for members

Lineage & relations

Influenced by

CubismCubism’s break with single-point representation helped prepare formal possibilities for Surrealism’s rearrangement of objects and space.

Sources

The Met：Surrealism