These artists claimed, from the very beginning, that sleep was a way to free our subconsciousness. They found in sleep a different way of seeing life than when awake, which enriched and broadened the experience of knowledge.

La Faux Miroir, by René Magritte (1929)

Technique: oil on canvas - MoMA (New York)

Nowadays, New York's MoMA is presenting "Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary,1926-1938", an exhibition of the works that belong to the exact period when the artist approached Surrealism. The exhibition marks the experimental road Magritte (Belgium, 1898-1967) took to achieve the most creative paintings of his long career.

The previous painting, called The Faux Mirror, causes confusion and displeasure. The iris of the eye is a cloudy sky, as if it were reflecting what the eye is seeing. Magritte maybe meant that the vision of reality is the limit to our dreams. 

La Clairvoyance, by René Magritte (1936)

Technique: oil on canvas - MoMA (New York)

In this second painting, the artist in picture is copying an egg, however, on the canvas there's actually a bird. It's a playful game to show the limits between creation, sleep and reality.

Photography was also influenced by this movement, as can be seen in the works of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). In the following photo he combines a geometric composition with the silhouette of a boy and a cart. As in black and white dreams, the place looks blurry, shadows unbalance the image and the boy looks at something, probably marvellous, that we can not see. 

Salerno, Italia - Henri Cartier Bresson (1933)

Technique: B&W photography / Measures: 140 x 175 cm

MNBA - Not on display