surreal mean something strange, absurd, what does not correspond to reality. Saying that an event is surreal means that it escapes reality, which is bizarre or absurd.
Some scholars believe that the word surreal (or surrealism) was coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, in conjunction with "sur" and "realism", which refers to something that is beyond realism or reality.
The term surreal designates that which presents characteristics of the surrealism. Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that emerged in Europe in the 1920s. Its characteristics were irrationalism, the denial of logic, incoherence, and it valued all forms of expression of the unconscious, the abstract, dreams and instinct itself.
The psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and the political theories of Marx had a strong influence on the movement. Some of the artists who stood out during this period were the painters Salvador Dalí, Renée Magritte, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico; the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, among others.
