Surrealism - the basics & artists

Quick facts
- Surrealism is basically the weird and wonderful, anything that is 'unreal'.
- It began in the early 1920s
- Broad intellectual movement
- Years between first and second world wars were most productive
- Originated as a response to the crisis in Western culture after WW1
- Less anarchic than DADA
- Responded to the psychoanalytical investigations by Freud
- Guillaume Apollinaire (French writer) created the word 'surrealism' from the words 'super-realism'
- Andre Breton was the founding father of surrealism

Artists
- Georgio De Chirico; "metaphysical" like surrealism
- Duchamp; Fountain, LHOOQ (more DADA movement)
- Rrose Selavy; (Duchamp's female alter ego)
- Joan Miro; doodles & automatic drawing
- Jon Burgerman; modern artist, uses automatic drawing and creates characters from his doodles
- Salvador Dali; paintings of his dreams, focused a lot on Freud and what Freud thought
- Kurt Schwitters; "Merz" movement
*Merz ran parallel with Surrealism, but wasn't as popular. It was more about chance, very low tech, working with found objects to make collages*
- Andre Masson;
- Francis Picabia;
- Rene Magriette;
- Alfred Jarry; "absurism", writer of absurd stories such as Ubu Roi
*Surrealism followed on from Absurdism*
- Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven; part of DADA, amdired Duchamp, supposedly 'Fountain' was her idea