Surrealism
- Bryleigh Pierce
- Dec 29, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 12
Emerging in the early 1920s from the turmoil of World War One, Surrealism sought to liberate creativity from the confines of rationalism and moral convention. Rejecting reality and logic, Surrealist artists turned to Freudian psychoanalytic theories to access their mind’s involuntary mechanisms, specifically their subconscious, in an effort to reveal deeper truths about human existence. Found in their fantasies or nightmares, this was, in part, influenced by the missing-limbed veterans returning from the front lines.
While initially centred in Paris, Surrealism’s reach soon became international, encompassing a diverse group of artists who redefined the possibilities of visual and literary expression. Within the movement, however, double standards and gender dichotomies proliferated.
Surrealism’s projected ethos of equality and radical thought was a compelling proposition for women, although was not often seen in practice, resulting in many women rejecting the movement’s formal group and its founder, André Breton, due to the profound misogyny of its male members.
For male artists in particular, Surrealist ideas were built around the sexuality of the female image and the femme-enfant, with the likes of Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí filling their canvases with violent and brutal images of fragmented or idealised bodies. However, despite the gatekeepers of art history so often writing it in such a way, being seen as little more than a muse was not something these strong-willed women intended to settle for, and so the eroticised portrayal of the feminine body was turned in on itself and they showed women as strong and sexually and socially free.
Surrealist women
Eileen Agar
(Argentina-England, 01/12/1899 - 17/11/1991)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting, Photography, Sculpture
Claude Cahun
(France, 25/10/1894 - 08/12/1954)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
Leonora Carrington
(England-Mexico, 06/04/1917 - 25/05/2011)
Period: Twentieth and Twenty-first century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Ithell Colquhoun
(England, 09/10/1906 - 11/04/1988)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism, Occultism
Medium: Painting
Leonor Fini
(Argentina-Italy, 30/08/1907 - 18/01/1996)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Kati Horna
(Hungary-Mexico, 12/05/1912 - 19/10/2000)
Period: Twentieth and Twenty-first century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
Valentine Hugo
(France, 16/03/1887 - 16/03/1968)
Period: Nineteenth and Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting, Photography
Frida Kahlo
(Mexico, 06/07/1907 - 13/07/1954)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Jacqueline Lamba
(France, 17/11/1910 - 20/07/1993)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
Dora Maar
(France, 22/11/1907 - 16/07/1997)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
Maruja Mallo
(Spain, 05/01/1902 - 06/02/1995)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Modernism, Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Lee Miller
(United States of America-England, 23/04/1907 - 21/07/1977)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
Meret Oppenheim
(Germany-Switzerland, 06/10/1913 - 15/11/1985)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting, Photography, Sculpture
Alice Rahon
(France-Mexico, 08/06/1904 - 09/1987)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Kay Sage
(United States of America, 25/06/1898 - 08/01/1963)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Stella Snead
(England, 02/04/1910 - 18/03/2006)
Period: Twentieth and Twenty-first century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Dorothea Tanning
(United States of America, 25/08/1910 - 31/01/2012)
Period: Twentieth and Twenty-first century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Toyen
(Czechia, 21/09/1902 - 09/11/1980)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Remedios Varo
(Spain, 16/12/1908 - 08/10/1963)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Painting
Yevonde
(England, 05/01/1893 - 22/12/1975)
Period: Twentieth century
Movement: Surrealism
Medium: Photography
