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Salvador Dali was born in Catalonia, Spain, in 1904. Dali entered the school of fine arts, Madrid in 1929. In the same year he joined the French Surrealist Movement in Paris. He was probably one of the most eccentric of the surrealists. Dali, like many other surrealists, studied the works of Sigmund Freud. He also studied the works of Italian renaissance painters. These influences are reflected in his paintings which portray the Freudian dream world presented in the precise technical detail of the former Italian masters. He was later rejected by the French surrealists for being too academic and commercial in his style. In 1939 he went to live in New York where he continued to produce surrealist works.

Given below is given a profile of three of the leading surrealist artists. Salvador Dali the eccentric Spanish surrealist, Max Ernst the imaginitive German surrealist, and the innovative Belgian surrealist Rene Margritte. To view a selection of the artists works simply click on their pictures.

Max Ernst was born just outside Cologne, Germany, in 1891. Ernst studied philosophy and psychiatry at the University of Bonn. He did not study art and had no formal artistic education. He had a great interest in contemporary art which led him to discover the Dada movement. He gave up his studies in Bonn and in 1919 co-founded the Cologne Dadaist group along with Johannes T. Baargeld. In 1922 he went to Paris and joined the Surrealist Movement. He invented 'frottage' - rubbing paper with pencil or charcoal whilst it was placed behind a rough material, and pasting of pieces of paper or cloth to canvas - in 1925. Ernst experimented with automatic writing.

His work was in tune with nature and, in the surrealist tradition, the subconscious. In 1941 he went to New York where he rejoined Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp. The three men edited a surrealist magazine from 1942 to 1945. He married the famous American surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning.

Rena Margritte was born Belgiam in 1898. Margritte studied at the Academy of fine arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918. In 1922 Margritee saw a painting by the Italian metaphysical artist Georgio Chirico (a strong influence on surrealists although never a member of the surrealist movement) called "The Song of Love". This painting moved him to tears and changed his outlook on art. Margritte joined the Parisian Surrealist movement in 1927 and went about producing sixty pictures in one year. In the same year he gave his first exhibition. This was poorly recieved by critics which depressed him.In 1930 he moved to Paris in order to work more closely with the surrealist movement.

During this time he developed his pictorial style. Margritte become increasingly adverse to Bretons strong organisation and leadership, and in 1930 he moved back to Brussels where he at last gained recognition for his works. Margrittes paintings are very realistic and striking. He often takes two or more unrelated objects and paints them together, creating something very strange or 'surreal'.