André
Breton (February 18, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French
writer, poet, and surrealist theorist. His writings include the
Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as
pure psychic automatism.
Born
into modest origins in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied
medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological
ward in Nantes, where he met the spiritual son of Alfred Jarry,
Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for
established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably.
Vaché committed suicide at age 24 and his war-time letters
to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres
de guerre (1919), to which Breton wrote four introductory essays.
In
1919, Breton founded the review Littérature with Louis
Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also connected with Dadaist Tristan
Tzara.
In
The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques), a collaboration
with Soupault, he put the principle of automatic writing into
practice. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was
editor of La Révolution surréaliste from 1924. A
group coalesced around him — Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon,
Paul Éluard, René Crevel, Michel Leiris, Benjamin
Peret, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos.
Anxious
to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the
works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton
joined the French Communist Party in 1927, from which he was expelled
in 1933. During this time, he survived mostly off the sale of
paintings from his art gallery.
Under
Breton's direction, surrealism became a European movement that
influenced all domains of art, and called into question the origin
of human understanding and human perceptions of things and events.
Dissatisfied
with the Vichy government, Breton sought refuge in the United
States and the Caribbean in 1941. Breton made the acquaintance
of Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, and later penned
the introduction to the 1947 edition of Césaire's Cahier
d'un retour au pays natal. Breton returned to Paris in 1946, where
he continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists
in the form of expositions or reviews (La Brèche, 1961-1965).
In 1959, Andre Breton organized an exhibit in Spain to celebrate
the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism called the Homage to Surrealism
which exhibited works by Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Enrique
Tábara and Eugenio Granell.
His
works include the novels Nadja (1928) and L'Amour Fou (1937).
He
married three times
His
first wife was the former Simone Kahn. His second wife was the
former Jacqueline Lamba. His third wife was the former Elisa Claro.
André
Breton died in 1966 at 70 and was buried in the Cimetière
des Batignolles in Paris. |
