SURREALIST ARTISTS
The Surrealist movement predominantly involved art, but also included poetry, music, film, and performance. The movement stemmed from artists Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Rene Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali (see images), Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, Man Ray, and Joan Miro. These artists primarily followed Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifesto", but, Breton turned right around and rejected important Surrealists like Dali and Magritte from the group in the 1940's.
Jean Arp (1887-1966)
Enak's Tears (Terrestrial Forms) 1917 Painted wood relief 34 x 23 1/8 x 2 3/8in Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Jean Arp joined the Surrealists in 1926. He later joined Cercle et Carre (Circle and Square) and the Abstraction - creation group, both of which had Surrealist aspects to them. In 1930 Arp invented a new form of collage. This version involved torn pieces of colored paper which he dropped onto a sheet of paper. He then arranged them according to where they dropped on the paper. These became know as "organic concretions". He later showed this organicism through wooden sculpture.
Hans Bellmer (1902-1975)
Doll (La Poupee) 1935-36 Gelatin silver print 7 1/4 x 7 in Collection of Timothy Baum.
In 1933 he made a Doll, which was simultaneously to be the ideal object of his dreams and a protest in the name of childhood against the stifling adult world. The rest of his work revolved around his super-toy. He settled permanently in Paris in 1938, and was always a faithful adherent of surrealism. With drawings like The Thousand Girls (Mille Filles), 1939-1941, and Four Persons, 1941, he began a cycle of quintessential works in which he entirely remade female anatomy.
Alexander Caulder (1898-1976)
He went to Paris in 1926, where he made his first animated objects - a miniature circus - and showed in the Salon des Humoristes in 1927. He also made sculptures in steel wire (Josephine Baker, 1926), geometric metal sculptures to which Arp later gave the name of stabiles, and animated sculptures which were brought into motion either by hand, as in Goldfish bowl (1929), or by a motor, as in Torpedo shape executing a dance movement (1932). He later went on to make constructions which moved at the slightest breath of air to which Duchamp gave the name of mobiles.
Marc Chagall
Birthday 1915 Oil on cardboard 31 3/4 x 39 1/4in Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)
The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street 1914 Oil on canvas 34 1/4 x 28 1/8in Private Collection.
His thought was greatly influenced by the German philosophers, and by Nietzche in particular. His work was appreciated only by Picasso and Apollinaire. He spent the years 1915-18 in Ferrara, where with Carlo Carra he invented pittura metafisica, 'metaphysical painting'. He moved to Rome and soon abandoned the dreamlike mystery of his arcades, porticos, mannequins (or dummies) and so-called 'evangelical' still lifes, and turned toward classicism. Between 1925-1930 he lived in Paris where he had a number of brushes with Breton and his friends, who accused Chirico of betraying his genius.
Joseph Cornell (1903-1973)
Untitled (Pharmacy) 1943 Construction 15 1/4 x 12 x 3 1/8in Collection Mrs. Marcel Duchamp, Paris.
Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Dali began his life as a Surrealist in 1929. He systemized confusion and used the irrational to add mysticism. Dali became interested in Surrealism in 1928 when he went to Paris with Miro to meet the Surrealists. He too used real objects, but studied Freud's psychoanalysis in order to release himself from the stream of consciousness. He then proceeded to develop the paranoiac-critical method of painting. He defines the method as "a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on critical and systematic objectivity of the assertion and interpretation of the delirious phenomena". A good example of this method would be Illuminated Pleasures one of his many paintings. Dali had unity in his objects, but not in his backgrounds. If you look in the background, there are usually large spaces and gaps that are void. Despite Dali's advances in Surrealism, he was rejected from the group by Breton in 1934, and is now one of the most recognized of the Surrealists.
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Fountain 1917 (original lost) Readymade: porcelain urinal Height 60 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art.
He is said to be the father of Postmodernism and is certainly the founder of Dada art. He also had an overwhelming influence on Surrealism through works such as Nude descending a staircase (1912), inventing the 'readymade' and the 'optical machine', and made the first glass panel - To be looked at with one eye from close to for almost an hour (1918). The Bride stripped bare by her bachelors even (1915-1923) is one of the many most recognized works and is widely studied. He was the most inventive artist of the 20th century (ok, my personal opinion).
Images from: © 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris