HELENE BAILLY is an art gallery in Paris that exhibits works from the Surrealist movement, featuring artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, and Joan Miró.

Born in the interwar period, Surrealism is much more than an artistic movement: it is a drive toward the unconscious, an attempt to depict what escapes reason. In 1924, André Breton laid its foundations in the Surrealist Manifesto, calling for a complete liberation of the mind, beyond logic and conscious control. Painting became a stage for the irrational, where objects deform, transform, and take on mysterious meanings.

Salvador Dalí is perhaps its most iconic figure: his melting clocks and desert landscapes filled with visual anomalies reflect a sharp, whimsical vision of the subconscious. Alongside him, Max Ernst invented new techniques, such as frottage and grattage, that brought unexpected forms to the surface, blending the fantastic with the dreamlike.

Victor Brauner, for his part, drew on a personal iconography rich with myths and symbols, bordering on the mystical. By freeing imagery from logical constraints, Surrealism opened up a space for total escape between the real and the imaginary.