Surrealism was born soon after Dadaism, and blossomed in Europe and the United States in the '20s and '30s. It first began as a literary movement by André Breton, and then as an analysis of Freudian dreams. The automatism (way to create without conscious control) was used to awaken the unconscious imagination. It fetched deliberately the bizarre and irrational to express hidden truths, unreachable by logic. There are two forms within the movement: Joan Miró and Max Ernst practiced the improvised art, distancing themselves as much as possible of conscious control. Others, like Dali, Magritte and de Chirico, used realistic techniques to submit hallucinatory scenes that defied common sense.

It was the development of an art that criticized the European culture and the fragile human condition in an increasingly complex world. Aesthetic movements arise that interfere with the fanciful way in reality. Surrealism was by excellence the modern artistic representation of the irrational and subconscious. In the manifesto and subsequent written texts, the Surrealists reject the so-called dictatorship of reason and bourgeois values ​​as homeland, family, religion, work and honor. Humor, dream and counter logic are resources to be used to free man from the utilitarian existence.

This artistic movement arises every time that imagination manifests itself freely, without the brake of the critical spirit, valuing the psychic impulse. The surrealists leave the real world to penetrate the unreal because the deepest emotion of the being has all the possibilities to express itself just with the approach of the fantastic, in the point where human reason loses control.

Surrealism has relationships with Futurism and Dadaism. However, if the Dadaists proposed only the destruction, the Surrealists preached the destruction of society in which they lived and the creation of a new, being organized in other bases. The surrealists wanted to achieve another reality, situated in the plane of the subconscious and the unconscious. The fantasy, the states of sadness and melancholy exerted great attraction on the Surrealists, and this made them approach the romantics, though they were far more radical.

SALVADOR DALI It is undoubtedly the best known of the surrealist artists. His early works are influenced by the Cubism of Gris and the metaphysical painting by Giorgio de Chirico. He started to get interested in the psychoanalysis of Freud, which was of great importance in all his works. His first trip to Paris in 1927 was crucial for his career. He became a friend of Picasso and Breton and was enthusiastic about the work of Tanguy and the Mannerist Arcimboldo. He created the concept of "critical paranoia" to refer to the attitude of those who reject the logic that governs the life of the common people. He said we must "contribute to the total discrediting of reality.

JOAN MIRÓ Breton regarded Miró as the most surrealist of all. He wanted to banish reason and release the unconscious. He invented biomorphic signs similar to objects of nature. Over the years, these forms were becoming more simplified. Miró said, "the important thing is to lay bare the soul." "Miró did not put a point on a sheet of paper without hitting straight to the target," Giacometti said. The famous magic of Miró manifests on canvas in crisp lines and shapes sincere in appearance, but difficult to be elucidated, although it is presented in a friendly way to the observer. Miró was also devoted to ceramics and sculpture, in which he overflowed its pictorial concerns.

"The dream can not also be applied to the solving of the fundamental questions of life?" (Fragment of the Manifesto of Surrealism André Breton, the French who launched the movement). In the same manifesto, Breton defines surrealism: "psychic automatism by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing or in any other manner, the real functioning of thought. " Vladimir Kush - nowadays it is common to see surrealist painters. Kush is contemporary, but his style is surrealistic.

Humor, dream and counter logic are resources to be used to free man from the utilitarian existence. Under the new order, the ideas of good taste and decorum must be subverted. Surrealism stood out in the arts, mainly in paintings and sculptures which expressed the dreams of artists. However they could not be just common dreams, they should be those that have varied and confused shapes, like a bull with wings or a fish walking on clouds.

Beyond its artistic dimension, it had an ultimate goal, and somehow transcendent: achieve a radical renewal of humanity through transformation of their cultic schemes because, according to Breton, "the man has kept in his own thinking, a fact unknown to which depends undoubtedly the future organization of the world. "