Īpollinaire used the term in his program notes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Parade, which premiered. He wrote in a letter to Paul Dermée: 'All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used'. The word surrealism was first coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.įounding of the movement Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes, 1921 The most important center of the movement was Paris, France. However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until after October 1924, when the Surrealist Manifesto published by French poet and critic André Breton succeeded in claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by Yvan Goll, who had published his own surrealist manifesto two weeks prior. The term 'Surrealism' originated with Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917.

It was influenced by the Dada movement of the 1910s. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as communism and anarchism. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement.

However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the 'pure psychic automatism' Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e., artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to 'resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality', or surreality. Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas.

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