The 1920s were a time of cultural reinvention. After the devastation of the First World War, artists, writers, and thinkers searched for new ways to understand the world and the subconscious. Out of this hunger emerged one of the most influential movements of the 20th century: Surrealism. Rooted in dreams, chance, and the exploration of the unconscious mind, surrealism transformed visual culture and continues to inspire contemporary art, from outsider aesthetics to fantasy wall art prints and posters.
This article explores surrealism’s beginnings in the 1920s, focusing on its early experiments with dreams and automatism, and how these innovations connect to modern symbolic and fantastical art.
The Birth of Surrealism in the 1920s
Surrealism officially began in 1924 when André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto. But its seeds were already present in the 1910s, shaped by the chaos of war and the rebellious energy of Dada. While Dada celebrated absurdity and destruction, surrealism sought to rebuild—through the unconscious, dreams, and symbolic imagery.
The 1920s became the laboratory for surrealist ideas. Artists like Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and André Masson began experimenting with new ways of creating images that bypassed rational control. They turned to automatism, dreams, and symbolic archetypes to access a deeper truth.
Automatism: Drawing Without Conscious Control
One of the most radical techniques to emerge in the 1920s was automatism. Inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis, artists sought to let the unconscious mind take over. They abandoned traditional composition, instead allowing the hand to move freely across the page in drawing or writing.
Joan Miró’s biomorphic shapes and André Masson’s automatic drawings revealed forms that seemed at once playful, organic, and uncanny. These images carried a dreamlike quality, as if reality had been filtered through another dimension.
This practice resonates today in outsider art and fantasy-inspired wall prints, where improvisation and intuitive creation often reveal hybrid forms, surreal botanicals, and unexpected visual archetypes. Automatism was not about perfection—it was about uncovering hidden stories.
Dreams as Creative Blueprint
Surrealism in the 1920s was also profoundly tied to dream imagery. The idea was simple but revolutionary: dreams were not random; they were windows into the psyche.
Max Ernst used collages to create fantastical dreamscapes from fragments of magazines and books. Dalí, slightly later, perfected his “paranoiac-critical method” to access dreamlike distortions of reality. Early surrealist posters and prints often presented fragmented faces, melting forms, and botanical hybrids—images that defied rational logic but felt intuitively meaningful.
Dreams became the blueprint for a new kind of art: one that valued emotion, intuition, and subconscious associations as much as technical mastery.
Surrealism as Escape and Protest
The 1920s were marked by recovery from war, economic instability, and political upheaval. For many artists, surrealism was not just an aesthetic but a form of escape and protest. By creating works rooted in dreams and automatism, surrealists challenged the authority of rational thought and the rigid systems of politics and culture.
This rebellious spirit still lives on in fantasy and surreal wall art prints, which use strange hybrids, symbolic botanicals, and mythic figures to resist mainstream conventions of beauty and narrative.
Symbolism and Archetypes in Early Surrealism
The early surrealists were fascinated by symbols. Eyes, moons, serpents, and flowers appeared frequently, carrying archetypal weight. These motifs echoed ancient myths and folk traditions while reemerging in dreamlike compositions.
Eyes symbolised awareness and the uncanny.
Moons and stars linked to mystery and cycles.
Flowers suggested fragility but also transformation.
Such symbols remain central to today’s pagan-inspired and fantasy artworks, where hybrid florals, surreal portraits, and mystical motifs continue the surrealist legacy.
My Work: Carrying Surrealism Forward
In my own art practice, I often find inspiration in these early surrealist experiments.
Automatic drawing translates into spontaneous forms, where flowers and faces merge in unexpected ways.
Dream imagery informs surreal hybrids—plants that bloom into eyes, portraits that transform into landscapes.
Symbolic archetypes like moons, serpents, and blossoms anchor my prints in a shared cultural language that resonates across time.
Printed as fantasy wall art posters, these works are not only decorative but part of a longer tradition of surrealist escape and symbolic storytelling.
Why Surrealism Still Resonates Today
The early surrealists of the 1920s tapped into something timeless: the human desire to dream, escape, and reimagine the world. In times of crisis or uncertainty, surrealism reminds us that art can open secret doors, showing us realities that logic cannot explain.
Today, hanging a surreal or fantasy wall art print in your home is more than a design choice. It is a way of carrying forward the surrealist tradition—embracing mystery, symbolism, and the subconscious as part of daily life.
The first steps of surrealism in the 1920s—automatism, dreams, and symbolism—were more than stylistic experiments. They were radical acts of imagination in a world that craved renewal.
As artists today continue to merge fantasy, folklore, and surreal hybrids in wall art and posters, they carry forward the surrealist legacy: making visible the invisible, turning dreams into symbols, and transforming art into a language of escape.
