Beyond Reality

Travel beyond the boundaries of reality and discover iconic artworks that explore other worlds, dreams, and the surreal. 

Throughout the ages artists have constructed alternative realities through paint. Their interpretations of myths, dreams, nightmares, and our subconscious often prompt us to ask big questions about the human mind and our own reality.

The most famous group of artists to produce such works were the Surrealists. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s writings on the unconscious mind, artists such as Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí, created surprising, and often challenging imagery with deep symbolic meaning.

But the Surrealists were not the only artists to paint works of this nature. 400 years earlier Renaissance artists Hieronymus Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo, often referred to as Proto-Surrealists, were producing fantastical figures and peculiar human-animal hybrids in paintings such as The Garden of Earthly Delights and the Four Seasons series.

Furthermore, in the late 19th century Symbolist artists such as Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch were also painting surreal scenes inspired by ancient myths, dreams, poetry, and spiritualism to convey deep human emotions.