Surrealism was an artistic movement that began in the early 1920s. It aimed to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind and rejected logic and reason. Artists used techniques like automatic writing to create strange and illogical combinations of images. Leading surrealist artists included Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, and Rene Magritte. They created works like Dali's The Persistence of Memory that combined everyday objects in dreamlike scenes. Surrealism has had a worldwide influence and spread quickly, influencing later artistic movements like abstract expressionism.