Considered one of the most representative artistic styles of the 20th century, surrealism emerged in the 1920s as part of the advancement of the artistic avant-gardes that sought to represent ideals different from the academicists, breaking the laws of traditional painting and thus managing to call the viewer's attention directly. In the case of surrealism, one can point out the presence of non-realistic and in many cases not even figurative images, which aimed to follow the designs of feelings rather than those of reason.
As its name says, surrealism as an artistic avant-garde was characterized by representing what was observed in reality in an unreal, absurd or fantastic way. In many cases, surrealist paintings are not the product of reality but of dreams and non-rational ideas that the artist had in his mind at the time of making the work. The works do not have a graphic linearity, the spaces are usually broken, the proportions of the figures are not real and the colors are often inverted.
The socio-political context of the time is undoubtedly related to the development of this artistic avant-garde since it was inserted in a historical period of generalized crisis caused by the war and by the different economic and social complications. This reality of hopelessness, fear and disorder had one of its clearest representatives in surrealism as these artists show a different, altered and in many cases chaotic reality.
However, surrealism was not simply a group of artists who sought to represent reality differently. Thanks to the work of the Frenchman André Breton, the movement spread to a large part of Europe and did so especially on a philosophical and theoretical level, establishing what they themselves called "the Surrealist Revolution" or the total absence of logical and rational thought.
Among the most important artists of Surrealism, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and many others, whose works are unmatched in their unique, challenging and deeply poetic style, must be mentioned without a doubt.
