Facts about Hieronymus Bosch and Early Surrealism
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Early Surrealist writers referenced Bosch in their manifestos as evidence that irrational, dream-based art had deep roots in European painting history.
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Bosch's nightmarish hybrid creatures and hellscapes influenced early Surrealist exhibitions that used historical art to legitimize their break from rational pictorial tradition.
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The dreamlike, monster-filled imagery in Bosch's fifteenth-century triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights became a touchstone for early Surrealist artists seeking historical validation for irrational, unconscious imagery.
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Salvador Dalí admired Bosch's hallucinatory painted worlds and acknowledged him as a forefather of the Surrealist visual imagination.
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André Breton and the Surrealists claimed Hieronymus Bosch as a precursor to their movement, citing his fantastical imagery as anticipating their exploration of the unconscious mind.