Surrealism, emerging from Dada, explores the unconscious and the bizarre influenced by Freud's studies on dreams. Notable surrealists like Giorgio de Chirico and Salvador Dali employed methods like automatism to create art that provokes and disorients, working across various media, including film and found objects. In the Philippines, artists Galo and Hernando Ocampo adapted surrealist styles, reflecting the emotional landscape shaped by the aftermath of World War I and II.

1. Surrealism

2. Surrealism
A movement that grew out of Dada
was Surrealism.
Fascinated by the studies of Sigmund
Freud on the inner workings of the mind, the
Surrealist appreciated the mysteries of
dreams and the unconscious, and the appeal
of the bizarre and the strange.

4. The characteristics of
Surrealism
Who are its main formulators?

5. Giorgio de Chirico created one of
the first of those invented worlds of
the Surrealism and one of the most
enduring. The world he created is at
once desolate and empty but filled
with suggestions; deserted, yet full
of mysterious presence.

6. Other Surrealist used
automatism – the creation of art without
conscious control as in intuition and
dream experience. Salvador Dali’s Soft
Construction with Boiled Beans:
Premonition of a Civil War is a curious
kind of dream or nightmare picture. Like
dreams, the painting shows the familiar
changing and shifting of the subjects.

7. Other Surrealist used
automatism – the creation of art without
conscious control as in intuition and
dream experience. Salvador Dali’s Soft
Construction with Boiled Beans:
Premonition of a Civil War is a curious
kind of dream or nightmare picture. Like
dreams, the painting shows the familiar
changing and shifting of the subjects.

8. Surrealism further developed into a style
distinct from other styles.
It worked in a host of new media and “mixed
media” forms like collage, frottage (rubbed patterns),
photomontage, objects, and found or manipulated
objects.
Later, it went further to explore fashion,
advertisement, theater, environmental works, the
cinema, photography, and much more.

9. Probably of the most
Surrealists’ objects are Meret
Oppenheim’s Luncheon in Fur and
Man Ray’s Gift.
Meret Oppenheim. Object
(Luncheon in Fur), 1936.
Fur-covered cup and steel
spoon.

10. Probably of the most
Surrealists’ objects are Meret
Oppenheim’s Luncheon in Fur and
Man Ray’s Gift.
Man Ray. Gift, 1958. Steel,
nails.

11. The viewer is simultaneously
attracted and repelled by them.
Though their acceptance or
rejection is for the viewer to decide,
it is fair to say that what the
Surrealists wanted for these objects
is to be provocative, disorienting,
and – like dreams – strange.

12. Film is an ideal medium for
Surrealism.
Luis Buñuel, working
closely with Salvador Dali,
created disturbing and
deliberately confounding scenes.

13. Robert Wiene’s film,
on the other hand, was
considered to be a
reference to Germany
itself, a country in which a
power – mad leader had
led unsuspecting masses,
leading them into the
horrors of World War II.

14. Philippine art, from the time of the pioneers
until after the end of World War II, owed much to
the modern art movements that sprang up in Europe
at the turns of the century.
What are the influences of Surrealism in Philippine
Art?

15. For one, Surrealists have since been able to attract
a number of adherents and agave the artistic direction to
what Filipino modernists were looking for. Two prominent
Filipino artists pioneered Surrealist style in the Philippines.
They were Galo Ocampo and Hernando Ocampo.
What are the influences of Surrealism in Philippine
Art?

16. Galo Ocampo. Nuclear Ecce Homo,
1931. Oil on canvas.
H.R. Ocampo. Blooming, 1949. Oil
on canvas

17. Hernando R. Ocampo

18. Surrealism offered a personal solution
to life during the years following the trauma of
World War I. Galo Ocampo and H. R. Ocampo’s
forms, in turn became accurate expressions of
the Filipinos’ sentiments, particularly during
the onset of World War II.