Surrealist Art Movement. Exploring the Subconscious and Dreams through Surrealist Artworks

I bet you've seen or at least heard about surrealism, the symbolic art of dreams. Surrealism is a movement that was created in 1920 and was revolutionary, a totally different way of seeing things in the world and reality. The aim was to explore the subconscious mind to obtain the most extraordinary creativity to expand the well-known traditional art. It mainly shows imaginary, illogical, fantastic and symbolic ideas about life, questioning the perspective of reality. A thought-provoking art.

But what is the simplest way to connect with your subconscious?

Psychology, dreams and surrealism

There are different psychological theories about dreams that are related to subconsciously. Psychoanalysis suggests that dreams always have a meaning that is represented through symbols and is closely related to our deep desires, fears, repressed thoughts and many other studies show that dreams are linked to our brain activation. The surrealists took this argument to start this movement and explore the hidden ideas of our minds to create amazing irrational and abstract paintings.

Some of the most famous artist that uses dreams as inspiration

Salvador Dali (1904-1989): His paintings are characterized by the use of  clocks and oneiric landscapes

The Persistence of Memory/ Salvador Dalí

Max Ernst (1891-1976): A pioneer of surrealism, he painted using frottage and collage techniques.

The Elephant Celebes / Max Ernst

Rene Magritte (1898-1967): recognized by include optical illusions and paradoxes that paradoxes that dare reality

the son of man/René Magritte

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011):  A woman artist with facinant ideas including mythology alquimia and mysticism

The Bride of the Wind/ Leonora Carrington

If you are an artist, you are learning to paint or would like to know how these artists use dreams as inspiration, here is the famous Dali's technique that you can try and use at any time with almost nothings:

Hold an object (a spoon or a ball) while you fall asleep in a chair. The moment you fall asleep and start dreaming, the object will fall from your hands making a noise and you will wake up. After this you will have at least one idea, or one will emerge from your recent mental connection by this hypnagogia state.