Symbolism
Symbolism developed across Europe in the late nineteenth century as painters used dreams, myths, and mysterious imagery to suggest emotions and ideas.
Painting Movement
Surrealism
Surrealism grew from a Paris-based movement exploring dreams and the unconscious through unexpected imagery, automatic drawing, and imaginative painting.
Surrealism quick facts
Surrealism began with André Breton's 1924 manifesto and developed distinct artistic approaches, from spontaneous marks to precisely painted dream scenes.
| Origin | Paris, France, emerging from literary and artistic circles |
|---|---|
| Approximate period | 1924–1940s as an organized movement; its influence continued afterward |
| Classification | An international avant-garde movement across visual art and literature, not a single painting technique. |
| Historical context | After World War I, artists extended Dada's challenge to convention alongside new interest in dreams and the unconscious. André Breton's 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism helped formalize the movement. |
| Common subjects | Dream landscapes, altered everyday objects, bodies, symbols, and unexpected encounters |
| Defining characteristics | Dream imagery, startling juxtapositions, unconscious associations, and irrational scenes |
| Paint types | Oil paint, gouache, and watercolor appear in different artists' works. |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas for many oil paintings; paper and card supports for smaller experimental works. |
| Painting methods | Painters ranged from precise illusionistic rendering to automatism, poured stains, frottage, collage, and chance-based processes. |
| Famous painters | Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró |
| Representative works | Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, Magritte's The Menaced Assassin, and Miró's The Birth of the World |
Sources: MoMA: Surrealism, MoMA: Surrealism and dreams, The Met: Surrealism, MoMA: Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, and MoMA: Miró's The Birth of the World.
Paint types in Surrealism
Surrealist painters used oil for both precise dream imagery and spontaneous marks, alongside water-based media in experimental works on paper and card.
-
Oil paint
Salvador Dalí rendered the impossible objects in The Persistence of Memory (1931) with precise oil painting. Joan Miró took a contrasting approach in The Birth of the World (1925), pouring, brushing, and flinging oil paint on canvas. The small canvas heightens the contrast between softness and precision.
-
Gouache paint
Max Ernst painted the tiny Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden (1946–47) in gouache on cardstock, using the medium for a miniature Surrealist landscape. MoMA records its size at just 1.4 by 3.6 centimeters, so the detailed scene occupies a remarkable sliver of support.
-
Watercolor paint
MoMA's 1941 exhibition catalogue records Miró's Persons (1936) as a combination of watercolor and oil, showing his use of water-based color beyond his better-known large canvases. This mixed-medium example is specific to one work and does not imply that all Miró paintings shared the same process.
Sources: MoMA on Dalí's oil painting, MoMA on Miró's poured oil paint, MoMA on Ernst's gouache miniature, and MoMA's 1941 Miró exhibition catalogue.
Famous painters from Surrealism
Dalí and Magritte created uncanny, carefully rendered scenes, while Miró developed a more abstract language of symbols and spontaneous forms.
-
Joan Miró
Miró's The Birth of the World combines floating marks, stains, and biomorphic shapes in a composition that suggests an image emerging from chance. His Surrealist painting draws on automatic methods and personal signs, loosening representation while retaining a carefully balanced relation between color and form.
-
Salvador Dalí
Dalí painted impossible scenes with the sharp detail of conventional realism, making dream images appear unnervingly tangible. In The Persistence of Memory, limp watches and an empty landscape show Surrealism using precise technique to unsettle familiar ideas of time and reality.
-
René Magritte
Magritte's The Treachery of Images pairs a painted pipe with the phrase “This is not a pipe,” separating an object from its representation. His Surrealist paintings use crisp, familiar imagery to expose how pictures shape assumptions about reality, language, and what viewers think they see.
-
Max Ernst
Ernst used collage, frottage, and scraped paint to create images that seem to emerge from chance rather than deliberate planning. His Surrealist practice turned experimental methods into strange landscapes and figures, extending techniques he had first explored within Dada.
Sources: MoMA: Surrealism; MoMA: Surrealism and dreams; The Met: Surrealism; MoMA: Dalí's The Persistence of Memory; MoMA: Miró's The Birth of the World.
Related painting movements
Symbolism anticipated Surrealism's dream imagery, while Giorgio de Chirico's earlier Metaphysical Painting provided a direct visual precedent.
Metaphysical Painting
Metaphysical Painting emerged in Italy in the 1910s, pairing silent plazas and unlikely objects with distorted spaces that make familiar scenes strange.
Dada
Dada emerged during World War I as artists rejected artistic conventions through absurd humor, chance, collage, unconventional objects, and performance.