Surrealism
A 20th-century literary and visual art movement that explored the unconscious mind, dreams, and irrational imagery as a means of liberation from rational constraint.
Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 when Andre Breton published the first Surrealist Manifesto. Inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis and the Dada movement, Surrealism sought to access the unconscious mind through automatism (spontaneous writing or drawing without rational control) and dreamlike imagery.
Visual Surrealism took two distinct forms: the hyper-realistic dream imagery of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, where impossible scenes are rendered with photographic precision; and the automatist abstraction of Joan Miro, where biomorphic shapes and spontaneous mark-making suggest the unconscious directly.
Frida Kahlo is often associated with Surrealism -- though she rejected the label, preferring to say she painted her own reality. Her self-portraits share Surrealism's psychological intensity without its theoretical program.