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André Breton
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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.
André Breton - Biography
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 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 Miro, 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 and was interred in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris.
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