In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Freud's psychoanalytic studies and political uncertainties created a favourable climate for the development of an art that criticized European culture and the fragile human condition in the face of an increasingly complex world. Aesthetic movements arise that fantastically interfere with reality.

Surrealism was par excellence the modern artistic current of the representation of the irrational and the subconscious. Its origins must be traced to Giorgio De Chirico's Dadaism and metaphysical painting.

This artistic movement arises every time the imagination manifests itself freely, without the brake of the critical spirit, what counts is the psychic impulse. Surrealists leave the real world to penetrate the unreal, for the deepest the emotion of being has every possibility of expressing itself only as of the fantastic approaches, at the point where human reason loses control.

The publication of the Surrealist Manifesto, signed by André Breton in October 1924, historically marked the birth of the movement. It proposed the restoration of human feelings and instinct as a starting point for a new artistic language. For this, it was necessary for man to have an introspective view of himself and to find that point of the spirit in which the internal and external reality are perceived free of contradictions.

Free association and dream analysis, both methods of Freudian psychoanalysis, became the basic procedures of surrealism, although applied in their way. Through automatism, that is, any form of expression in which the mind has no control whatsoever, the surrealists tried to shape, either through abstract or symbolic figurative forms, the images of the deepest reality of the human being: the subconscious.

Surrealism has relations with Futurism and Dadaism. However, if the Dadaists proposed the only destruction, the Surrealists preached the destruction of the society in which they lived and the creation of a new one to be organized on other bases. The Surrealists thus intended to reach another reality, situated at the level of the subconscious and unconscious. Fantasy, the states of sadness and melancholy had a great attraction for the surrealists, and in this respect, they come close to the romantic ones, although they are much more radical.