Surrealism began in the 1920s. This was after WW1, where everyone was devastated. It was all about experimenting with imagination and people needed a break from reality. Surrealists were inspired by a famous psychologist called Sigmund Freud. (A psychologist studies behavior and how people think). He thought and wrote about the mind, memories and human instincts. He was also interested in people's dreams and their subconscious thoughts. Subconscious thoughts are thoughts that we don't even know we're having!
Ways to create surrealism:
Morph/transform - make something slowly turn into something else
Distort- stretch or shrink parts of an object to make it strange and unusual
Eliminate - take part of an object away
Juxtapose - put two things together or near each other than are complete opposites