Manifestoes of Surrealism

Breton was born in 1896 to a middle-class family in Normandy, France. He enrolled in medical school as a young man, but his education was paused when he was drafted into World War I. He spent the war working in a neurological hospital, which furthered his interest in mental illness and psychiatry. A patient at the hospital, Jacques Vaché, was a devotee of Absurdism and helped inspire Breton to found the Surrealist movement. In 1919, Breton and several members of the Dada Movement launched the magazine Littérature, which collected art and writing from Dadaists and early Surrealists, including Man Ray and Francis Picabia. In 1924, he created the Bureau of Surrealist Research, a loose collective that met to discuss the burgeoning movement. He wrote the first Surrealist manifesto the same year. Breton is often considered the founder of the Surrealists, and he was the movement’s de facto leader for many years. In the 1930s, his work became controversial among some Surrealists, and he was shunned by a faction of the movement. He continued to be an important ambassador for Surrealism, though, and helped take the style to a wider audience. For example, he was responsible for a historically important exhibition of Surrealist work at Yale University in 1942.

Breton was also involved in a number of radical political spheres; he and other Surrealists believed the movement to be revolutionary as well as artistic. He joined the French Communist Party but became disillusioned with the group and was eventually thrown out. In 1938, he traveled to Mexico and became involved with the International Foundation for Independent Revolutionary Art alongside figures such as Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Breton returned to France to be a medic during World War II but was exiled by the Vichy government, who believed his work to be dangerously subversive. He ultimately moved to Haiti to learn about the resurgence of Vodou and other traditional practices in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. While he was there, the Haitians overthrew their new government, and he developed relationships with the artists, writers, and students who helped initiate the overthrow. After World War II and his return to France, Breton defined himself as an anarchist. He spent the later years of his life working with anarchist and anti-fascist groups in his native country.

Breton was a key figure in both the practice and the preservation of Surrealism. His technique of “automatic writing," as demonstrated in “Soluble Fish,” is likely his most impactful personal contribution to the art world. He was also an avid collector who amassed a vast archive of Surrealist works and traditional art from around the world. His wife made this collection available for study after his death. Although his belongings were eventually sold after a failed attempt to create a Surrealist foundation to preserve the collection, a wall of his apartment was saved and can be viewed in the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris.