Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media.
André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Surrealist Women: An International Anthology is an anthology edited by Penelope Rosemont. It was published by University of Texas Press in 1998.
The Chicago Surrealist Group was founded in Chicago, Illinois, in July 1966 by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Tor Faegre and Robert Green after a trip to Paris in 1965, during which they were in contact with André Breton. Its initial members came from far-left or anarchist backgrounds and had already participated in groups IWW and SDS; indeed, the Chicago group edited an issue of Radical America, the SDS journal, and the SDS printshop printed some of the group's first publications.
Penelope Rosemont is a visual artist, writer, publisher, and social activist who attended Lake Forest College. She has been a participant in the Surrealist Movement since 1965. With Franklin Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Robert Green and Tor Faegre, she established the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1966. She was in 1964-1966 a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), commonly known as the Wobblies, and was part of the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1967-68. Her influences include Andre Breton and Guy Debord of the Situationist International, Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons.
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was a Spanish-born Mexican surrealist artist working in Spain, France, and Mexico.
Ithell Colquhoun was a British painter, occultist, poet and author. Stylistically her artwork was affiliated with surrealism. In the late 1930s, Colquhoun was part of the British Surrealist Group before being expelled because she refused to renounce her association with occult groups.
Toyen, born Marie Čermínová, was a Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator and a member of the surrealist movement.
Meret Elisabeth Oppenheim was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer.
Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
Emma Frith Bridgwater, known as Emmy Bridgwater, was an English artist and poet associated with the Surrealist movement.
The Bureau of Surrealist Research, also known as the Centrale Surréaliste or "Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries" was a Paris-based office in which a loosely affiliated group of Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and conduct interviews in order to "gather all the information possible related to forms that might express the unconscious activity of the mind." Located at 15 Rue de Grenelle, it opened on 11 October 1924 under the direction of Antonin Artaud, just four days before the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton.
The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s.
John William Melville was a self-taught British Surrealist painter. He is described by Michel Remy in his book Surrealism in Britain as one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Great Britain.
View was an American literary and art magazine published from 1940 to 1947 by artist and writer Charles Henri Ford, and writer and film critic Parker Tyler. The magazine is best known for introducing Surrealism to the American public. The magazine was headquartered in New York City.
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Philippe Soupault and André Breton’s 1920 book collaboration Les Champs Magnétiques is often considered to be the first Surrealist work, but it was only once Breton had completed his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 that ‘Surrealism drafted itself an official birth certificate.’
Object , lit. Object, known in English as Fur Breakfast or Breakfast in Fur, is a 1936 sculpture by the surrealist Méret Oppenheim, consisting of a fur-covered teacup, saucer and spoon.
Alberto Gironella (1929–1999) was a self-taught Mexican painter born in Mexico City. Heavily influenced by the politics and artist in Mexico, he showcased his works in Brazil, United States, Spain, France, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland. In Mexico his works were in the Palace of Fine Arts and Museum of Modern Art, and the Carrillo Gil and Rufino Tamayo museums. Gironella also illustrated the book Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes. In 1960 he won the first prize of the Paris Biennial for Young Painters and the first prize of the Sixth Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil. Several of his later paintings were nudes, including several with either topless or fully naked women on beds either holding a classical guitar or one shown in the background such as Sanda as Carmen (1985). Gironella has left behind a legacy with his artworks and his only known son, Emiliano Garcia, has continued to share his father's works. specifically his father's "Las Meninas" series.
Proto-Surrealism is a term used for Surrealism avant-la-lettre. It is the study of various forms of art, literature, and other mediums that correspond to, reference, or share similarities to the 20th-century art movement known as Surrealism. This definition is considered a controversial topic, with many debating the suitability of the term surrealism to describe these bodies of work and instead opting to use the term Fantastique or Fantastic Art.
Radojica Živanović Noe was a painter and graphic artist of the period of Surrealism and a writer. He left a small number of compositions, still lifes, landscapes and drawings. The most significant period of Živanović's artistic creation is his affiliation with the Surrealist movement (1930–33). He was one of the thirteen signatories of the Manifesto of Surrealism and the only professional painter in the group of artists who initiated the Belgrade Surrealist movement.
