Surrealist Artworks as a Stimulus for Student Artistic Expression

Works of fine art present an inexhaustible source of imagination, aesthetics, and creativity and can stimulate the development of personal creativity. Communication with artworks is possible if trained to understand and aesthetically experience them. It is therefore important to be in contact with the rich symbolic meanings of the language of art. If we want to educate students to be able to communicate and understand the cultural dynamics of art forms and to successfully communicate with art forms in the future and develop their visual art literacy, we should implement artistic educational content in higher education. Contact with artworks allows students to better understand their thoughts and feelings and, if using appropriate methods, an artwork can stimulate students to be creative. This paper investigates the influence of Surrealist paintings (made by Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali) on stimulating the artistic creativity of 46 first-year students of Early and Preschool Education at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split, Croatia. The results are presented using a qualitative methodology, i.e. a specific method of aesthetic transfer (perception, reception, and reaction) that brings the observer of the artwork into aesthetic interaction with the work and stimulates their experience of the work along with their creativity. Experiencing the artworks of Surrealism aroused students’ emotions and aesthetic experience, allowing them to create background stories about the observed. Using various freely chosen art techniques, they also made their own artworks, which influenced the development of student creativity.