Pablo Picasso was never a member of the Surrealist group officially, but he was represented in the exhibition of Surrealist paintings at the Galerie Pierre (Paris) in 1925 organized by the Surrealist group. Picasso’s surrealist period started around 1925. Over the next ten years Picasso contributed and influenced this movement.

The interpretation of a surrealist painting is more subjective and personal due to its unconscious content. By knowing the artists we can gain insight to the personal elements in the paintings. Little is known of the artists Miro and Magritte, and thus interpretations of their paintings proved to be difficult. However, the universal side of a surrealist painting can best be summed up by Dali, “the symbolic language of the subconscious is truly an universal language, it does not depend on education or culture or intelligence…” n Claude Cahun’s photographic self-portrait “Claude Cahun And Marcel Moore” (Illustration in Aveux non avenues 1929-1930), she wrote,”Under this mask another mask. I shall never finish stripping away all these faces. And underneath all these masks, there is no ‘real’ identity.”

Dorothea Tanning on her 30th birthday painted her self-portrait “Birthday” in 1942. Her fascination of the endless openings of doors depicts a surrealist’s image of the labyrinth, the ‘rooms’ of the unconscious mind. The winged creature in front of her is a nocturnal animal called a Lemur from Madagascar, usually associated with the spirits of the dead and the night. The theatrical purple jacket and the human-shaped roots skirt express the conflict and contrast of nature and culture.

Surrealism was one of the most avant garde movements of the 20th Century art world. The artists dared to cross the boundary of the consciousness into the unknown of the mind, and thus influencing the art world even until to

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