Salvador Dali Rene Magritte Marcel Duchamp In Brief: Sotheby's Advice and Verse in London In Brief: Christie’s When in... Berlin Subodh Gupta

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1921 Andre Breton adopts the term "Surrealist," coined by the poet Apollinaire, to describe the mining of the subconscious and automaton-like immediacy being practiced by Breton's Parisian coterie of writers and other creative types.

1924 Breton publishes the first Surrealist Manifesto, calling for a revolution against existing mores and customs that would free the mind.

1925 Galerie Pierre in Paris shows "Exposition, La Peinture Surrealiste." The Galerie Surrealist opens in the same city that year with an exhibition of works by Man Ray.

1929 Dalí joins the Surrealists, ushering in the group's golden age. His short film Un Chien Andalou, made with Spanish director Luis Buñuel, is released in Paris. Nearly plot-free, the film is intended to shock viewers, most famously with the menacing image of a straight razor descending toward a woman's eyeball.

1932 Dealer Julien Levy holds the first show of Surrealist art in New York. The highlight is Dalí's painting The Persistence of Memory, which Levy bought from the artist for $250 the previous year.

1936 Surrealism enters mainstream culture with the movement's first large survey, a 600-work exhibition at MoMA titled, “Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism.”

1938 Back in Paris, the group shakes things up with the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galerie Beaux-Arts. Breton taps Marcel Duchamp (who was not a Surrealist) to design the show, which features hundreds of bags of coal hanging in the main hall, lit by just one light bulb. The floors are covered with leaves and dirt. Visitors are given flashlights to view the artworks. Public response tends toward disgust.

1939 Dalí is expelled from the group for his support of Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco, among other reasons. As World War II engulfs the continent, many of the European Surrealists scatter to the United States.

1942 Max Ernst marries the bohemian arts patron Peggy Guggenheim. Within four years they will be divorced, after which Ernst marries fellow Surrealist Dorothea Tanning.

1947 The last major group exhibition, Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, is offered at Galerie Maeght in Paris.

1954 Max Ernst is awarded the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale.

1966 Breton dies, effectively ending the organized Surrealist movement.

2003 At an auction preview of Breton’s estate at the Hotel Drouot-Richelieu in Paris, protesters set off stink bombs; they are concerned that the French poet’s collection of Surrealist art works, objects, books and papers could be dispersed around the globe. The sale, at CalmelsCohen, earns €46 million ($50.1 million), well above the €30 million ($32.6 million) estimate. The French government, however, is one of the top buyers, securing many important books and manuscripts for the country’s museums.