Surrealism is more than an artistic style—it’s an artistic movement.

Unlike other creative movements, which can be characterized by themes of imagery, color choices, or techniques, defining Surrealist art is slightly harder to do.

Surrealist artists—like Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, or Michael Cheval, among many others—seek to explore the unconscious mind as a way of creating art, resulting in dreamlike, sometimes bizarre imagery across endless mediums. The core of Surrealism is a focus on illustrating the mind’s deepest thoughts automatically when they surface. This thought process for creating art known as “automatism.”