Surrealism is an art movement of dreamlike and impossible images. The surrealism of the painting, born of surrealism, pure surrealism.
It began in Paris in the 1920s and set out to put the unconscious on canvas, using accident and dream imagery on purpose. The word is now used loosely of anything absurd, which the founders would have found funny.
1nounsurrealismAn art movement of dreamlike and impossible images.
“Salvador Dalí's melting clocks are perhaps the best-known image of surrealism.”
surrealism is a movement.
From surrealisme, coined in French in 1917 and taken up by the movement's manifesto in 1924.
French
surréalisme
English, today
surrealism
Borrowed from French surréalisme. by surface analysis, sur- + realism or surreal + -ism.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA