Surrealism Women: Arts 20-20 Rebels with a Cause (Part 1: MPK)

Readers may wonder what is my interest in Surrealism and its rebellious 20-20 (20 more famous and 20 less popular) women artists? Well, I took my first art history class at Broward Community College under the tutelage of Mr. G. I. Sullivan and never looked back. Given the historical times they lived in, where women were literally seen (in the artworks), but not heard of as the artist, only as the muse/model. As a result, we did not hear much about them. Before diving into who the women artists were, its best to trace the historical periods from ancient or the prehistoric period, through the middle ages, and finally present times. Bear in mind that the periods overlap and can reemerge (Artland Editors, n.d.; Sayre, 1997). Over the centuries, we learned of all the male artists. Names like Picasso, Dali, Rivera, and Hopper, as well as many of the more popularly known old masters like Rembrandt, Monet, da Vinci, Michelangelo, van Gogh, and Warhol that quickly rolled off our tongues. But what of the great female artists over the centuries? Do we know of them? The aim of the book is to have the great women artists' names entrenched in our memories and rolling off our tongues too. In this section, the book will also acquaint you with some of the these great artists (not Surrealists at this juncture), beginning with the renaissance period and ending with the twentieth century (Sayre, 1997). Surrealism is defined as an European cultural movement, developed after World War I in which artists depict "unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself" ("Surrealism", 2022) that infected artists around the world. The first volume of the book looks at a random sample the lives and works of Surrealism's 20 More Popularly Known (MPK) artists. Do you want to know who they are? Read on.