Surrealism as a visual movement had found a method: to expose psychological truth by stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.

As André Breton, founder of the movement succinctly said, “I resist with all my strength temptations which, in painting and literature, might have the immediate tendency to withdraw thought from life as well as place life under the aegis of thought.”

Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I. A number of artists, writers and intellectuals - notably of French and German nationalities - found themselves congregating in the refuge that Zurich (in neutral Switzerland) offered. They considered the modern world to be meaningless and futile given their conclusion that all previous forms of knowledge and art eventually resulted to the barbarism, greed and ruthless capitalism that fueled the war. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.

The artists of the Dada movement had become disillusioned by art, art history and history in general. Many of them were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical of humanity after seeing what men were capable of doing to each other on the battlefields of Europe. Because of this, they created art that was nihilistic in nature. Their goal was to evoke feelings of disgust, shock and outrage from the viewer - emotions that matched how they themselves felt towards the modern world. Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dada, followed by Cubism and, to a lesser extent, Futurism.

André Breton, during World War I, worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met Dada devotees Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably.

From then on, he inflicted his fellow writers, poets, painters and other intellectuals with a strong disdain for the rigid control of logic. in 1924, he published “The Surrealist Manifesto” wherein he posited that Surrealism was a means of reuniting the conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.”

Breton’s efforts continued to escalate and gain momentum as he wrote, published and distributed books, articles and other visual materials that would bring together artists, thinkers and researchers in a united hunt for a sense of expression of the unconscious. Together, they researched and delivered to the public the definition of a fresh aesthetic, a new humankind and an unconstrained social order. The movement was organized and purposeful. They would hold regular meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing.

Throughout the 1930s, Surrealism continued to become more visible to the public at large. A Surrealist group soon developed in Britain and, according to Breton, their 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition was a high water mark of the period and became the model for international exhibitions. Dalí joined the group in 1929, and participated in the rapid establishment of the visual style between 1930 and 1935. Him and Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement.