Modern art in Europe: SurrealismComenius 2009-2011, 3rd meeting Austria, Art

What is surrealism?

• Attitude of life• Provocation of the middle-class• Represents unconscious, dreams and

imagination• Inspiration by Sigmund Freud• Important founders: Paul Eluard, Louis

Aragon, Luis Bunuel, Jean Cocteau, Salvator Dali…

The first surrealists• Hieronymus Bosch, 1450-1516• His work is known for its use of fantastic imagery to

illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives Heaven, Hell, etc

• Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1527-1593• Best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made

entirely of such objects as fruits

Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Spring

Modern surrealism in our countries• Italy: • Spain:• Austria:• Romania:• Turkey: • Netherlands:

Italy

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

Art as a reaction to war

Pablo Picasso was strongly against war and he represented his attitude in his painting: „Guernica“ (1937).The subject of the painting is that Picasso saw the destruction of the village Guernica. In fact, Franco asked the German airfighters (Legion Condor) to destroy this village and break the resistance of the Spanish Republican Army.The picture was painted with oil on canvas and shows legs, army, faces, horses, bulls depicted in an abstract way.Surrealism and Cubism is mixed together and it represents the war in Spain.

G u e r n i c a, 1 9 3 7

„Art is a lie that makes us

realize the truth“ (-Pablo Picasso)

Spain

Austria• After Second World War a group of young

painters from Vienna founded a special group: The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.

• All these young men studied at the academy of fine arts in Vienna. Their professor was Albert Paris Gütersloh.

Turkey

Netherlands

M.C. Escher• Dutch artist who lived in the

20th century• He played with mathematical

problems• Drew with black pencil• Featuring impossible

constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations (mosaic).

Salvadore Dali: The Persistance of Memory