The Meeting with Surrealism - The 1930´s

Artists all over Europe are affected by the climate and new isms flourish contrasting with the positive spirit that influenced the French art of the 20´s. In 1924 the Dadaist poet André Breton writes Le Manifest du Surréalism which will be the foundation for surrealist literature and art in Paris. Artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and René Magritte join the movement. The ism has its roots in Freud´s psychoanalysis which at this time has revolutionary ideas about dream interpretation and the subconscious.

Surrealism means "beyond realism" in French and challenges the rational and intellectual. In the Halmstad Group´s surrealist paintings there are often headless figures - rationality is rejected and the subconscious reigns. At this time inspiration is taken from man´s boundless inner world. The laws of physics can be violated Margin picture: Surrealistmanifestet and unity formed between the most contradictory spaces and objects.

The Halmstad Group has contact with surrealism from the 1920´s but first in the beginning of the thirties do they experiment with the ism. By 1934 the Halmstad Group has evolved into a surrealist group with links to the continental surrealists, but with the local Halland landscape as persistent inspiration.

Next: The surrealism of the Halmstad Group