History of Surrealism

The surrealism movement was recognised in 1924 with the publication of the poet/French Doctor André Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism which gained popularity after the 'Dada' movement. Dada was led by Tristan Tzara who believed that a society which goes to war does not deserve art so he created a new type of art which strayed from the norm which had a focus on ugliness rather than beauty. Tzara's agenda was to offend the bourgeoisie however this backfired as the upper class instead embraced this new movement so the so called anti-art became art. However a group of artists did not embrace this movement which came to be surrealism.

The surrealists studied the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, however this spilt the group into two, two different views on their works, 'The Automatists' and 'Veristic Surrealism'

The Automatists

Automatism surrealism is where the artist creates a piece without conscious thought creating it with feeling and not something to be analyzed for meaning.

The Veristic Surrealists
Veristic Surrealism took the opposite approach to Automatism surrealism rather than create the art with feeling it created with meaning to be analyzed.