What Was British Surrealism?

Thomas McMullan | Frieze | 27th February 2020

Surrealism was essentially a French movement. An attempt to show there is an equivalent distinct strand of thinking in English art seems to fall short. Still, the English have an interest in strange imaginings and the eerie – “the threshold between the garden and the woods the tamed and the wild … the violence beneath the politeness”. As the surrealists were fond of saying “surrealism has existed always and everywhere.”