Beat Generation

Dadaism and Surrealism arguably had the most direct impact on the Beats: Dadaism with its attack on the elitism of high culture and its celebration of spontaneity; Surrealism with its transformation of the Dadaist rebellion into positive social intentions and its focus on revelations from the subconscious. Both movements, in a sense, developed as a reaction to WWI, just as the Beat Generation was reacting to the environment of post-WWII America.
"Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose." Allen Ginsberg
Three friends does not make a generation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation