Breton, André << bruh TAWN, ahn DRAY >> (1896-1966), was a French author and critic associated with two important movements in the arts. He participated in the activities of the Dada group in Paris between 1919 and 1921. In 1924, Breton founded the Surrealism movement, which he led until his death on Sept. 28, 1966. See Dadaism; Surrealism.
Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), together with the essays of Mad Love (1937) and other writings, represents the movement’s most important theoretical statement. Breton aimed at a revolution of the human spirit and a new way of life through the liberation of the subconscious mind. By freeing the imagination and “reimpassioning life,” he argued, the numbing effects of reason and convention could be overcome and the full measure of love, poetry, and liberty experienced.
Two of Breton’s prose works, Nadja (1928) and Arcane 17 (1945), focus on the hidden forces of the mind that intersect everyday reality. His poems were written mostly by a process of free association. Breton influenced the development of nonrepresentational styles of art through his essay Surrealism and Painting (1928, rev. eds. 1946, 1965). He was born on Feb. 18, 1896, in Tinchebray.
