An extraordinary hoard of subversive and radical art goes on public display for the first time this week after years hidden in the collection of a Leeds GP.More than 200 masterpieces of British surrealism, including works by Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Damien Hirst and Glen Baxter, as well as several continental surrealists such as René Magritte, were trucked at the weekend from a home in a Leeds suburb, which will be partially recreated in the exhibition at Mima, the new £14.2m Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.Old newspapers, war posters, photographs and letters between the artists and the collection's owners, Jeffrey and Ruth Sherwin, will be part of the three-month show. "Each door opens on a visual drama that delights in the element of surprise," said the art historian and Turner prize judge Andrew Wilson, after visiting the couple's house in a leafy sidestreet. "There are friendships, obscure references, tangled narratives and unexpected themes."The curator of the Mima exhibition, Gavin Delahunty, who says the collection is probably the world's best of British surrealist work, said: "The minute we arrived at Jeffrey and Ruth's, it was like stepping into an Aladdin's cave, or a labyrinth of art history which seemed to disobey all the rules."An honorary alderman of Leeds and retired local GP, Sherwin regularly spends the night in true surrealist style, rehanging the complete collection of more than 350 pieces to maintain surprise and variety. His interest was triggered by a Leeds exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the celebrated 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, which led to crowds blocking Piccadilly."It was a remarkable event, with Dylan Thomas offering people cups of string and asking if they would like it strong or weak," said Sherwin. "Dali nearly suffocated inside a diver's suit and had to be rescued by a young surrealist poet who had a spanner."My eyes were opened when I read about it. I'd never even known there was such a thing as British surrealism."The couple started collecting modestly, but soon began to run out of wall and floor space as artists warmed to their enthusiasm. Sherwin went with his family to stay with Henry Moore, who was shunned by the movement after accepting a church commission in 1944, and was delighted to find him a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher. "He believed, like her, that people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps," he said. At the same time, Sherwin and his wife, a professional pianist, were publishing Alter Ego & Doppleganger, the radical manifesto of Toni del Renzio, whose wartime poetry recital was showered by rival surrealists with rotten eggs.Sherwin also gave the funeral oration, with the painter Patrick Hughes and George Melly, for another friend, the surrealist anarchist Anthony Earnshaw. In surreal style, he had commissioned Earnshaw to make two pieces using equipment from his surgery, to mark the millennium and his recovery from a heart attack and triple bypass surgery. Both will be on show, under their titles of The Glamorous Heart Attack and Make Mine a Quadruple."I'm an ordinary person and surrealism is something the ordinary person can relate to," said Sherwin, who worked in the deprived inner city area of Harehills. "It's normality, but turned on its head. You see things you recognise, unlike abstract art or expressionism, which usually need explaining. You think: goodness, how interesting. How exciting. There's so much technical skill here, so many ideas - and they're British. People may not think the British are very surreal, that it's better left to the likes of Magritte, Man Ray and Max Ernst. But this shows that we can be."A Tory councillor for 20 years, and past chair of leisure services, Sherwin has lent individual pieces to galleries worldwide, but this is the first outing for the heart of the collection. Ruth Sherwin said: "We're going to take the chance to redecorate but the house won't feel empty for long. I'm sure Jeffrey's quickly going to find something else to hang on the walls."Both the couple and art historians are beginning to think about the long-term future of the collection. There was controversy five years ago when a similar Aladdin's cave built up by the surrealist poet André Breton at his home in Paris was broken up and 5,500 items auctioned for £30m.