Surrealism is an artistic and literary movement that began in the 1920s, characterized by its exploration of the unconscious mind and the dreamlike, irrational imagery it produces. It seeks to liberate thought and expression by embracing the illogical and unexpected, often using techniques like automatism (spontaneous creation without conscious control) and juxtapositions of unusual images.
According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” (Britannica)
