surrealist

A surrealist is a practitioner or admirer of Surrealism, a cultural and artistic movement that began in the early 1920s in Paris. Surrealism sought to unleash the unconscious mind’s creative potential, often through dream imagery, spontaneity, and unexpected juxtapositions that challenge ordinary logic. The term derives from the French sur-réaliste, meaning beyond realism.

The movement grew out of Dada and was formalized by André Breton, who published the First Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Surrealists aimed to reconcile dream and reality into a higher reality, sometimes described as surreality, through liberated thought and imagery. They worked across visual arts, literature, theatre, and film, valuing automatic processes such as free association and techniques like exquisite corpse, frottage, and dream documentation.

Prominent surrealists include painters Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy; photographer Man Ray; and filmmaker Luis Buñuel, as well as writers such as André Breton and Paul Éluard. Notable works include Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe, and Buñuel and Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou.

Surrealism influenced later movements in modern art, cinema, and literature, and its emphasis on the irrational, the uncanny, and the liberating potential of the unconscious continues to inform contemporary art and culture. The term surrealist is used to describe both adherents and works that embody this dreamlike or illogical character.