Surrealism is an artistic movement that emerged in the 1920s and flourished in Europe between the two world wars. It was inspired by the theories and discoveries of psychoanalysis, especially those of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who explored the hidden and irrational aspects of the human mind. Surrealism aimed to express the unconscious, the dream, and the imagination in a creative and revolutionary way, challenging the rational and conventional norms of art and society.

Surrealism has no unified style, but, in painting, one can distinguish a range of possibilities falling between two extremes. At one pole, the viewer is confronted by a world that is completely defined and minutely depicted but that makes no rational sense: realistically painted images are removed from their normal contexts and reassembled in absurd, illogical, or contradictory combinations. This is called veristic surrealism or illusionistic surrealism, and its main exponent was Salvador Dalí, whose works, such as The Persistence of Memory (1931), The Elephants (1948), and The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946), are full of bizarre and distorted objects, animals, and landscapes. Other artists who practiced this style include René Magritte, whose paintings, such as The Treachery of Images (1929), The Son of Man (1964), and The Human Condition (1933), play with the relationship between words, images, and reality; Yves Tanguy, whose paintings, such as Indefinite Divisibility (1942), Mama, Papa is Wounded! (1927), and Multiplication of the Arcs (1954), create alien and abstract landscapes with organic forms; and Paul Delvaux, whose paintings, such as The Break of Day (1937), The Sleeping Venus (1944), and The Great Sirens (1947), depict mysterious and erotic scenes of nude women, skeletons, trains, and classical architecture.

At the other pole, the viewer is presented with a world that is less defined and more suggestive, where forms are blurred, distorted, or transformed into something else. This is called biomorphic surrealism or organic surrealism, and its main exponent was Joan Miró, whose works, such as Harlequin’s Carnival (1924-25), Dog Barking at the Moon (1926), and The Birth of the World (1925), are full of colorful and whimsical shapes that resemble animals, plants, stars, or symbols. Other artists who practiced this style include Max Ernst, whose paintings, such as The Elephant Celebes (1921), Europe After the Rain II (1940-42), and The Eye of Silence (1943-44), use various techniques such as collage, frottage, grattage, and decalcomania to create textured and layered images that evoke ancient myths, natural history, or alchemy; André Masson, whose paintings, such as Battle of Fishes (1926), Automatic Drawing (1924), and There is No Finished World (1942), use automatic drawing or writing to unleash spontaneous and subconscious forms; and Jean Arp, whose paintings and sculptures, such as Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance (1916-17), Shirt Front and Fork (1922), and Human Concretion (1935), use geometric or organic shapes to create abstract compositions that suggest natural growth or movement.

Surrealism was not only a movement in painting but also in literature, poetry, cinema, photography, sculpture, music, theater, and other fields. Some of the most influential surrealist writers include André Breton, the founder and leader of surrealism who wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924; Louis Aragon; Paul Éluard; Robert Desnos; Benjamin Péret; Philippe Soupault; Antonin Artaud; Georges Bataille; Jacques Prévert; Raymond Queneau; Leonora Carrington; Leonor Fini; Dorothea Tanning; Frida Kahlo; Remedios Varo; Anaïs Nin; Djuna Barnes; Joyce Mansour; Gisèle Prassinos; Valentine Penrose; Unica Zürn; Leonora Carrington; Claude Cahun; Maya Deren; Luis Buñuel; Man Ray; Hans Bellmer; Marcel Duchamp; Alberto Giacometti; Alexander Calder; Meret Oppenheim; Wolfgang Paalen; Matta; Roberto Matta Echaurren ; Kay Sage ; Yves Tanguy ; Dorothea Tanning ; Toyen ; Remedios Varo ; Esteban Francés ; Gordon Onslow Ford ; Wolfgang Paalen ; Kurt Seligmann ; Enrico Donati ; Jimmy Ernst ; David Hare ; Gerome Kamrowski ; Robert Motherwell ; Isamu Noguchi ; Jackson Pollock ; Mark Rothko ; Arshile Gorky ; Wilfredo Lam ; Wifredo Lam ; and many others.

Surrealism had a significant impact on the subsequent artistic movements, such as abstract expressionism, magic realism, pop art, situationism, neo-dada, fluxus, postmodernism, and contemporary art. Surrealism also influenced other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, politics, feminism, and ecology.