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Surrealism "...an absolute reality, a surreality"--Andre Breton What is it? In the 1920's and 30's, the proponents of Surrealism, a European visual arts and literary movement, explored the direct expression of the unconscious unobscured by rational thought. Surrealism was influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories, but the movement was also very much a reaction against the "reason" that had led Europe into the devastations of World War I. Who were Surrealism's leaders? French writer Andre Breton, who served in a military hospital in WWI, created the philosophical core of Surrealism. The Surrealist painters essentially divided into two camps according to their visual style: The organic Surrealists included Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Yves Tanguy and Joan Miro. These painters worked with amorphous, organic forms which were imaginatively suggestive--even emotionally expressive--but non-representational. The narrative Surrealists which included Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Pierre Roy and Paul Delvaux painted a precisely depicted, hallucinatory world in which the elements were specifically represented but in which nothing made rational sense. Why is Surrealism important? Surrealism is credited as the force that kept expressive content alive in 2Oth century art. Because it provided an alternative to the geometric side of abstraction, the organic branch of Surrealism exerted a substantial influence on young painters of the early 1940's who would become the Abstract Expressionists.
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