Famous Surrealist Paintings – Seeing the World in a Dreamy Way

Usually, if someone brings up the topic of Surrealism artworks, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of melting clocks and elephants with long, spindly legs. Yet, while Salvador Dalí was one of the most well-known artists of the group, there are many renowned Surrealist artists who produced famous Surreal artworks as well. These Surreal paintings sought to explore the power of the subconscious mind in a period marred by war. Surrealism paintings allowed artists to explore new realities that were far removed from the collective war-era trauma experienced by the population.

The Most Notable Famous Surrealist Paintings

Surrealist artists used all kinds of strange methods to tap into their subconscious minds, relaying the symbols, shapes, and colors they experienced there through their Surreal paintings. Dalí, for example, utilized a technique he referred to as the “paranoiac-critical method”, in which he entered a state of paranoia through various self-induced methods so that he could subsequently paint the hallucinations that he experienced. Surrealism artworks are typically full of visual juxtapositions that one would not observe in the real world, revealing the strange and surreal world that lies just beneath the surface of the one we recognize – a reflection of our own unconscious minds. To gain a deeper understanding of Surrealism painting, let us examine a few of the most famous Surrealist paintings.

Hector et Andromaque (1950) by Giorgio de Chirico; Giorgio de Chirico, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Song of Love (1914) by Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico spoke of the significance of one’s dreams, of youthful innocence, and of the necessity to abandon logic in the production of beautiful imagery; yet, his emphasis was far less on his own beliefs and psychology and more on portraying the weirdness of the world. With its enigmatic and paradoxical mix of a traditional head, a ball, and a rubber glove, this Surrealist artwork was representative of de Chirico’s metaphysical compositions that resonated with the Surrealist movement.

For instance, when René Magritte, the renowned Belgian artist, first saw a print of it in the early 1920s, he couldn’t stop crying: he subsequently stated that seeing thought for the first time was one of the most visceral experiences of his life.

De Chirico took the notion of stripping his artwork of conventions and rationale to its absolute limit in this work: there is no apparent justification for the arrangement of the elements in this artwork, and while man’s creations are evident everywhere, mankind himself is mysteriously missing. This artwork contains many personal references, as is typical of de Chirico’s work. The train is a tribute to his youth, while the arcades are inspired by the architecture of Italian cities. The glove in the painting refers to a Titian work that de Chirico appreciated, as well as the gesturing “hand of fate” prevalent in the artist’s subsequent “alchemical” works. The ball can be seen as a representation of perfection, while the incorporation of the classical head implies a connection to the deity Apollo’s themes of clairvoyance and poetry.

Harlequin’s Carnival (1924) by Joan Miró

Joan Miró’s artworks were very surreal and he used less symbolism in his artworks than many of the other Surrealist artworks. Dali’s melting clocks can only express so much, but Miró’s artwork requires a long, careful examination before anything becomes apparent. Even then, you likely wouldn’t comprehend what was going on if it weren’t for the artwork’s title. This is due, in part, to Miró’s utilization of biomorphism. Biomorphic forms mimic things like animals and human beings, yet they still feel quite far removed from the thing they represent.

The artwork features a man with a mustache, a ladder, an unusually shaped insect, along with numerous other objects that appear to exist in an alternate reality.

Harlequin is the title of a well-known Italian comedic theatrical character distinguished for his checkered clothing. The word ‘carnival’ in the artwork’s title might be a reference to Mardi Gras, the pre-lent celebration that occurs before fasting begins. Miró was capable of drawing on Surrealism’s focus on dreaming and the subconscious mind as creative material. He painted his psyche, as well as his own life events and recollections. He uses his imagination to produce magical qualities in his works by combining these two sources. The artwork was influenced by the artist’s hallucinations during a period when he was facing financial troubles and unable to eat regularly.

Around the Fish (1926) by Paul Klee

A tray of fish is encircled by a cluster of seemingly incongruous items – full and crescent moons, a cross, an exclamation point, and a forked red flag – all suspended in a black void. Part of Klee’s iconography evolved from his teaching; the arrow, which he first utilized as a teaching tool at the Bauhaus school to express power and emotion for his pupils, now aims confrontationally at a stylized head, potentially hinting at human awareness. While his personal symbols and figurative motifs are typically cryptic, Klee felt they had broader overtones.

The object evolves beyond its form through our understanding of its inner essence, through the awareness that the object is more than its exterior reveals.

The Nazi regime condemned it as “degenerate art”, calling it juvenile, chaotic, and incoherent. However, it was this imitation of children’s artwork, the collage-like technique to constructing images, and the opposition of interpretation that drew the Surrealists to Klee’s work. Klee regularly used color and basic shapes such as squares, triangles, and circles, as well as mysterious little symbols in his artworks to convey emotion and to infuse spiritual meaning and aspects of the subconscious into his art. Klee was terminated from his teaching job in Düsseldorf shortly after the Nazis took control in 1933, forcing him to flee back to his home in Switzerland.

Around the Fish (1926) by Paul Klee; Paul Klee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The False Mirror (1928) by René Magritte

Who is really watching who in this famous Surreal artwork by Magritte? Produced in oil on canvas, this Surrealist artwork features a close-up of an open eye, with the usually whitened part of the eye filled with a cloudy sky instead. Magritte has effectively managed to blur the lines between the object being viewed and the person viewing it.

While some observers perceive wonder in the wide-open gaze of the eye, others see fear – or is that just a reflection of their own state of mind?

While this renowned Surrealism painting could be perceived by some as peaceful due to the beautiful blue sky and fluffy clouds, it is typically hung unusually high in an exhibition space, creating an impression that it is staring down at you in an ominous, almost judging manner. This led the famous artist and previous owner of the piece, Man Ray, to once remark that the artwork was able to see as much as it was itself seen. Magritte maintained that while the objects in artwork may look realistic, they were not meant to literally represent anything found in the real world, thus leading viewers to find deeper meaning in the symbolism of the eye and the sky. Perhaps this is why he named this famous Surreal artwork False Mirror.

The Great Masturbator (1929) by Salvador Dalí

Despite the apparent sexual expression in this artwork, Dali had a difficult relationship with masturbation, sexuality, and genitalia, which is explored in this painting. A face dominates much of the artwork, eyes closed, nose perilously balanced on the ground. This profile is supposed to be a self-portrait of  Dali, as well as based on a genuine rock found on the Catalan coast at Cape Ceres. A feminine figure, almost universally accepted as Dali’s great love, Gala, emerges from the face.

The female seems to be straining upwards to a male figure’s genital organs, as though some oral pleasure is going to take place.

His head and upper chest are obscured, and his knees seem to be recently scratched and bleeding. The female’s breasts are adorned with a single lily, adding to the phallic motif. His worries and discomfort are represented by the erratic and jumpy grasshopper clutching his face. The grasshopper can be found in several of his artworks. Dali was going through a personal transformation at the time of producing this artwork. It serves as an almost voyeuristic look into Dali’s mental processes, depicting the tornado of emotions and hormones caught up in Gala being thrown into his life, as well as the complexities of his unique mentality towards all matters sexual.

Observatory Time: The Lovers (1936) by Man Ray

This painting has been regarded as the definitive Surrealist artwork, a prime illustration of isomorphism, the utilization of biological forms bizarrely and indirectly alluding to man, in a type of precise, lifelike illusionism – the overarching theme in popular Surrealist artwork in the 1930s era. Man Ray managed to create a bold, grandiose statement in his artwork – the lips of a “devouring woman” floating through the air, a prominent theme in Surrealist philosophy.

The larger canvases pushed him to be more methodical in his actions and diverted him from the sloppy style that ultimately ruined his image as an artist.

Man Ray’s complete focus on the process of painting this artwork allowed him to ignore his growing aversion to photography and escape into the favored exalted and precise realm of Surrealist activity – perhaps this is why the lips are portrayed soaring through such lofty heights. The lips are fixed in a slight smile and colored a deep red. Man Ray is claimed to have been evoking the demonic lips of Maldoror, the “sapphire lips” from Lautreamont’s poem, a lyric composition that had left such an indelible mark on him during his American Dada phase.

Indefinite Divisibility (1942) by Yves Tanguy

This is a Surrealist piece inspired by the subconscious and dreams. Tanguy’s love of nature, particularly the sea, initially prompted him to create ethereal marine animals and aquatic plants at first, but he is most recognized for his subsequent abstract landscapes inhabited by biomorphic forms and painted in somber colors. Tanguy took a visual theme from his inspirational figure, Giorgio de Chirico: a cryptic structure that dominates the infinite and ethereal space.

In fact, it was a peek at one of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings through a museum window that inspired a young Tanguy to pick up a paintbrush in the first place.

Tanguy’s style was continuous from 1927 till his death: powerful and deep shadows, dark and unpleasant atmospheres populated by physical things molded into an abstract concept of uncertainty. Tanguy shapes a variety of everyday things into the figure of a man and what appears to be a mind drawing board used by an artist. In what looks like a beach these separate elements are transformed into an abstract unified concept. The juxtaposition of two shapes made up of many elements within an abyss provokes emotions of ambiguity about what the world is truly made up of. Is there a distinction between our human forms and the items made by man, or is everything purely fictitious?

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943) by Dorothea Tanning

Pleasure and fear exist as complementary components of the experiences and emotions that children endure in Tanning’s depictions of girlhood experiences. Since she portrays coming-of-age experiences and sexual awakenings driven by strong urges and burdened with frightening risks, her artworks often address how minors navigate mental multiplicities. This Surrealist artwork depicts a scenario in a confined hotel hallway that seems to be the result of a struggle between two girls and a giant, threatening sunflower. The girls are triumphant, although one of them seems to be completely exhausted.

Their clothes place them in the late Victorian or early Edwardian eras, and their delicate features are evocative of the scenes and characters from Lewis Carroll’s novels.

This disturbing incident and setting defy 19th-century literary ideals and childhood standards, upsetting the aristocratic convention that imagines nurseries as sanctuaries of innocence, or youngsters as unthinking cherubs. Tanning’s young girls, like Alice, are up against strange and malevolent powers. Tanning seemed to imply that little girls have an unrecognized power. Scholars of Surrealism think that the sunflower represents defloration, menstruation, and sexual insight. The flower fascinates while also disgusting and stimulates while also terrifying. This conflict of opposites is embodied in the gigantic sunflower, which appears to mimic and externalize the interior characteristics of the child in its connection to her.

The Giantess (1947) by Leonora Carrington

For the Surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington, the concepts of metamorphosis and transformation were crucial to her works, along with the notion of divinity within the feminine – a woman’s ability to bring life into this world. The artwork depicts a massive woman wearing a red dress and garbed in a green shawl, standing in a comparatively diminutive forest. Her red dress appears to be decorated with the depiction of figures in various poses. Several geese are flying around her with two emerging from underneath her shawl. In the forest beneath her feet, several animals and figures can be seen harvesting, hunting, and grazing.

Between her hands, the Giantess holds an egg – universally recognized as a symbol of new life.

The artist’s fascination for gothic and medieval imagery is noticeable in the artwork’s scale, color palette, and style: the Giantess’s face looks like a Byzantine image, drawn flatly and lit with a golden circle (in this case, her hair) that frames her features. She might have included the geese to reflect her fascination with Irish culture, wherein birds symbolize journeys, migration, and returning home. The weird figures that can be seen in the background are reminiscent of the beings seen in the works of Hieronymous Bosch. In a manner that emphasized Carrington’s desire to blend worlds, the sea and sky of the background appear to merge into one.

Alice with Lewis Carroll (1961) by Eileen Agar

Eileen Agar, a British artist, was a visionary as well as a Surrealist. She is widely identified with the European avant-garde movement, although her work combines elements of Cubism and English Surrealism, in addition to both the figurative and the abstract. Agar transcended any formal style and subverted the notion of the female “muse” by moving from one style to another, changing material and mood as she progressed. In this timeless piece, she celebrates the novelist Lewis Carroll as a wonderful master of imagination and time, the champion of Surrealism and freedom.

From their first publication, Lewis Carroll’s writings about Alice’s adventures have been a rich inspirational source for artists. The magical world of Alice in Wonderland can be considered a significant predecessor to Surrealism; the Surrealists in Britain even called themselves “The Children of Alice”, despite the fact that their visual influences are rarely visible. Nonetheless, there are more direct echoes of the novels in the artworks of Paul Nash, Roland Penrose, and Agar’s other works.

As we have discovered, the most famous Surrealist paintings were all representative of unconscious thoughts and behaviors, such as the act of dreaming. Surrealist artists combined personal and universal symbols in their works to impart messages that could be understood by the subconscious, if not directly interpretable by the conscious mind. These symbols served to represent the inner thoughts and realms experienced by the artists who created them. Thanks to the famous Surreal artworks of the past, artists today feel freer to express the deeper parts of their own psyche and not feel compelled to adhere to the traditional standards of representational art as depicted by the art world.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What Are Surreal Paintings?

They are paintings created by artists who work within the Surrealist movement. Embracing the symbols and imagery of the unconscious mind, Surrealist artists experimented with all manners of self-induced alteration of their state of mind that would allow them to access their unconscious minds and subsequently portray the things that they experienced. While objects in Surrealism artworks often remind one of the things observed in the real world, they often bore very little resemblance to the object they were representing.

What Characterizes Surrealism Painting?

Surrealism seeks to transform the human experience. It strikes a balance between a logical view of life and one that acknowledges the power of the unconscious and dreams. The artists of the Surrealism movement discover the wonder and unusual beauty in the unanticipated and weird, the overlooked and the unorthodox. It is distinguished by a distortion of reality characterized by paradoxical elements and arbitrary connections, as well as the use of visual form to represent and convey the unconscious. Surrealist works are defined by surprising, unsettling juxtapositions and absurdist content. The use of displacement is a fundamental surrealist concept. Surrealists used the elimination and displacement of an object from its original and recognizable setting to create jarring paradoxes that triggered new psychological connections for the observer.

Jordan Anthony( Content Editor, Art Writer, Photographer )

Jordan Anthony is a Cape Town-based film photographer, curator, and arts writer. She holds a Bachelor of Art in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where she explored themes like healing, identity, dreams, and intuitive creation in her Contemporary art practice. Jordan has collaborated with various local art institutions, including the KZNSA Gallery in Durban, the Turbine Art Fair, and the Wits Art Museum. Her photography focuses on abstract color manipulations, portraiture, candid shots, and urban landscapes. She’s intrigued by philosophy, memory, and esotericism, drawing inspiration from Surrealism, Fluxus, and ancient civilizations, as well as childhood influences and found objects. Jordan is working for artfilemagazine since 2022 and writes blog posts about art history and photography.

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