André Breton(1896 — 1966)

The first text written entirely through automatic writing, considered the founding act of Surrealism. The two authors wrote at full speed for several days without rereading or correcting, allowing the unconscious to speak freely.

The founding text in which Breton defines Surrealism, its methods and ambitions. This manifesto, one of the most influential of the 20th century, gave the movement its name, its theory, and its artistic and philosophical program.

An autobiographical novel recounting Breton's encounter with a mysterious and visionary young woman in the streets of Paris. The book is a meditation on madness, mad love, and objective chance, illustrated with photographs.

A theoretical and political radicalization of the Surrealist movement, with an avowed alignment with Marxism. Breton settles scores with the members he has expelled and deepens the notion of the 'supreme point' where opposites are reconciled.

A lyrical essay devoted to love as a revolutionary force capable of transforming reality. It contains the famous phrase about 'convulsive beauty' and a reflection on objective chance illustrated by Breton's encounter with Jacqueline Lamba.

Written during his exile in North America, this poetic and philosophical text evokes love, freedom, and resistance in the face of Nazi barbarism. Breton develops the symbol of the star as a figure of hope and renewal.

SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I 'haunt.' I must admit that this last word is misleading, tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, less avoidable, more disturbing than I intended.

Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may, one will never find any other motivating force in Surrealist activity than the hope of fixing and determining that point.

Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial, or it will not be at all.

We want: the independence of art — for the revolution; the revolution — for the definitive liberation of art. […] In the revolutionary struggle as in artistic creation, there is only one thing we ask: freedom.

Breton's studio and apartment in Montmartre, nicknamed "Ali Baba's cave," where he welcomed poets, artists, and intellectuals from around the world for decades. This place was the true headquarters of the Surrealist movement.

The daily meeting place of the Surrealist group in the 1920s and 1930s, where Breton and his friends played exquisite corpse, debated theories, and solemnly expelled members deemed to have strayed from the cause. This café served as Surrealism's informal parliament.

Breton's city of exile during World War II, where he hosted French-language radio broadcasts on Voice of America and helped establish Surrealism in America. His presence directly influenced the emergence of American Abstract Expressionism.

Breton visited in 1938 and met Trotsky, who was in exile at Diego Rivera's home, as well as the painter Frida Kahlo, whom he described as "a natural Surrealist." The trip gave rise to the manifesto *Towards an Independent Revolutionary Art*.

André Breton's birthplace, born on **February 19, 1896**. He spent his childhood there before moving to Paris to study medicine, a field in which he first encountered Freudian theory.