Surreal! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Salvador Dali

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist known for his eccentric, dreamlike paintings and contributions to avant-garde art.

"Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening" is a painting by Salvador Dalí from 1944. The dreamlike scene depicts Dalí's wife Gala sleeping naked over calm waters. She is surrounded by a wealth of symbolism, including a floating rock, drops of water, a pomegranate and a bayonet. At the top left is a surreal sequence, including a yellow-eyed fish bursting from the pomegranate, unleashing tigers and an elephant with flamingo legs carrying an obelisk.

The painting is in the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Answer: Joan Miro

Joan Miró (1893-1983) was a Spanish surrealist painter, sculptor and ceramicist. He is known for whimsical and abstract works and a style that combined Surrealism, Fauvism and Expressionism.

He painted "Harlequin's Carnival" between 1924 and 1925 and exhibited it in 1925 as part of the collective exhibition "Surrealist Painting" at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. The painting was inspired by the artist's hallucinations during a period of economic hardship and struggle for survival. Miró himself said: "I tried to translate the hallucinations caused by hunger. I did not represent what I see in my dreams, as the Surrealists often did, but what hunger produces: a kind of trance".

It is on show at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY.

Answer: Kay Sage

Kay Sage (1898-1963) was an American painter and poet. She was influenced by European Surrealism and often produced dreamlike landscapes with architectural elements. Sage's work explored themes of isolation and existentialism and contributed to the Surrealist movement in the United States.

Kay Sage created "I Saw Three Cities" in 1944. In this painting she combines the fluidity of drapery, reminiscent of ancient Greek aesthetics, with harsh geometric forms. The contrast creates a tension between modern and classical art and an eerie, ghostly atmosphere.

It is in the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, NJ.

Answer: Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo (1908-1963) was a feminist and anarchist Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter. Nature, alchemy, the supernatural and women as the source of sensitivity are her main themes. She worked mainly in egg tempera, using the technique of the old masters, with delicate brushstrokes on panels she prepared herself. In 2001, the Mexican government officially declared her paintings as "national cultural heritage".

"Celestium Pablum" was created in 1958. It depicts a solitary woman in a small chamber, sitting on a stool in front of a small table and feeding a moon with a spoon. The table, chair and utensils are reminiscent of a sewing machine or pasta maker's equipment, but the utensils have no ordinary use.

The painting remains in a private collection.

Answer: Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was an Italian artist known for his metaphysical style of painting. Influential in the Surrealist movement, his works depict enigmatic, dreamlike cityscapes with classical architecture, long shadows and eerie silence.

Painted in 1914, "The Song of Love" is considered an early example of Surrealist art, ten years before André Breton coined the term in his "Manifesto of Surrealism". At the time, Chirico's painting was more commonly defined as "metaphysical". Its surrealist character comes from the juxtaposition of uncanny objects - a giant surgeon's glove, a classical bust, and a rubber ball - to evoke a sense of mystery.

The painting is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Answer: Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) was an American surrealist painter, sculptor, poet and writer. She also designed stage sets and costumes for ballet and theatre. In 1946, she married German artist Max Ernst in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in Beverly Hills.

"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is a notable early painting by Dorothea Tanning, completed in 1943. It depicts a hotel corridor with numbered doors. A giant sunflower with a torn stalk and fallen petals, and a doll next to a girl dressed in similar clothing, suggest a dramatic encounter with powerful forces. The tattered clothes hint at struggle, and the girl's wind-blown hair signifies confrontation. Tanning describes it as a representation of personal dramas played out in various settings. The title of the painting is borrowed from one of Mozart's chamber works.

The painting is in the collection of the Modern Tate in London.

Answer: Yves Tanguy

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) was a French surrealist painter known for his dreamlike, abstract landscapes. Influenced by Andre Breton, Tanguy's works depict otherworldly landscapes populated by strange, organic forms. He was married to Kay Sage until his death in 1955.

Tanguy painted "Indefinite Divisibility" in 1942 after moving to the United States. In the painting a mysterious, biomorphic structure dominates the foreground, casting a dark shadow - a pattern he borrowed from de Chirico, an Italian painter of the "Pittura metafisica". Space seems infinite like an endless desert or beach. The atmosphere is dense and oppressive but filled with strong, warming light.

The painting is in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY.

Answer: René Magritte

René Magritte (1898-1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for placing everyday objects in unconventional contexts to provoke contemplation of reality and representation. His visual language had a lasting influence on Pop Art, Minimal Art and Conceptual Art.

"Golconda" (1953), a surrealist masterpiece by René Magritte, depicts a surreal scene of identical men dressed in overcoats and bowler hats either falling like raindrops, floating upwards or suspended mid-air against a suburban backdrop. The painting questions the veracity of images and highlights the tension between individuality and collective identity. The title refers to a legendary centre of the diamond industry, and Magritte playfully includes his poet friend Louis Scutenaire in the work.

"Golconda" is on view at the Menil Collection in Houston, TX.

Answer: Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a surrealist painter and writer born in Britain. She spent most of her adult life in Mexico and was among the last surviving members of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington also helped found the women's liberation movement in Mexico in the 1970s.

Her "Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)" is one of her best known paintings, produced between 1937 and 1938 in London and Paris. It is considered to be her first truly Surrealist work. The painting shows Carrington seated in an interior space, gesturing to a hyena, with a white rocking horse above her. The ornately curtained window reveals a forest with a galloping white horse. The presence of horses and hyenas was a recurring motif in her later work.

The painting is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Answer: Max Ernst

Max Ernst (1891-1976), a German surrealist pioneer, dadaist and naturalised American and French artist, revolutionised art with techniques like frottage and grattage. Traumatised by the First World War, Ernst criticised modernity. He explored ironic juxtapositions, often with his alter ego, a bird named Loplop. Settling in France, he achieved financial success and died in Paris in 1976.

Max Ernst radically rejected academic art and wanted to revolutionise people's attitudes to it. Inspired by Alfred Jarry's absurdist play "King Ubu", the painting "Ubu Imperator" is an ironic and satirical depiction of oppressive power. In an empty landscape, the "Imperator" appears as an anthropomorphic head framed in red armour with human hands suggesting surprise. The head embodies the concept of an unstable balance, implying that authority can be toppled at any moment. These elements combine to create an absurd and grotesque representation of authority.

The painting is in the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.