Surrealism was born with the original Surrealist Manifesto authored by André Breton in 1924. Breton had lived through the horrors of World War I and envisioned the Manifesto as a revolutionary document that would transform all facets of society, not simply create an artistic or literary movement. However, Breton’s autocratic personality eventually alienated most of the “members” of this group and its identity waned into the 1950’s, expiring with Breton in 1966.
Surrealist artists drew inspiration from the spatial innovations of Cubism, from the Dada movement’s embrace of the irrational, and from the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding unconscious thought and collective archetypes. Fascinated by child-like, primitive and irrational mental states and pictorial forms, they embraced "automatism," spontaneous acts of artistic creation that rejected any prior self-censorship or subsequent editing.
Though the Surrealists disbanded forty years ago, the ideas, images and spirit embodied by the movement have become so deeply ingrained in our shared culture, so integrated into how we talk about, see, learn and understand our world, that many art historians have called Surrealism the most influential artistic movement of the twentieth century. Perhaps this impact is the greatest achievement an “art movement” can hope for, as it ceases to become a distinctive entity and is subsumed into popular culture, inflecting or informing many aspects of contemporary society and inspiring later art movements to do the same.
