Andre Breton: biography, personal life, paintings with titles and descriptions, quotes

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

When the word “surrealism” appears in a conversation or text, the first associations that come to mind are “painting” and “Salvador Dali”. For many, the epitome of the fashionable direction in the first half of the last century is precisely the great mystifier. However, surrealism began, rather, with poetry, and then it was developed in painting. Andre Breton is considered the founder of the same direction. The artist, writer and poet created the ideology of surrealism. And all my life I was its center.

Andre Breton: biography from birth to World War I

The French writer was born in 1896 (February 19) in Normandy. Parents dreamed that their son would get a profitable profession and become a respected person. Andre studied at a church school, then at a college in Paris, and finally enteredSorbonne at the Faculty of Medicine. And although André Breton never became a doctor, he carried his interest in psychiatry around that time throughout his life. The conclusions and ideas that he came up with in the process of studying and comprehending the works of Charcot, and then Freud, in the future will become one of the foundations of the ideology of surrealism.

Turning Points

Already during his studies, Andre began to study literature. During the First World War, he served as an orderly and in the hospital met Guillaume Apollinaire, a famous poet who would later coin the word "surrealism". This was followed by a meeting with Phillip Supo. After returning to Paris at the end of the war, Andre, Philippe, as well as their friend Louis Aragon, took up active literary activity, which resulted in the creation of a new stylistic direction.

After the war

André Breton, after demobilization, plunged headlong into the world of poetry. He admired the works of Apollinaire, enjoyed reading W. Blake and Lautreamont, and at the same time continued to study psychiatry.

In 1919, André, together with Flip Soupault and Louis Aragon, opened the Literature magazine. At the same time, Breton began to participate in the activities of the propagandists of Dadaism, the avant-garde movement, which considered the systematic destruction of any aesthetics as its main idea. He meets the founder of the movement, Tristan Tzara. However, quite quickly Andre "outgrew" Dadaism. By 1922 he moved away from this direction and continued to create his own style. In the same year, Andre Breton, whose personal lifereplete with successful and promising events, met with Sigmund Freud in Vienna. The poet was greatly impressed by the experiments of the creator of psychoanalysis in the field of hypnotic dreams. Breton then uses his understanding of the works of Freud to develop the ideology of surrealism.

New direction

The first collection of poems by Andre Breton was published in 1923. It was called "Light of the Earth". And in the next, 1924, he became the head of a group that united surrealist artists and poets. The adherents of the new trend included Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard and, of course, Aragon and Supo, as well as many other young artists. By this time, most of the elements of surrealism had already taken shape, but the new direction lacked some harmony and clarity. Andre and his comrades amazed the audience with fights and scandals at exhibitions and in banquet halls, with outrageous presentations of their art. Breton, however, quickly realized the futility of the artistic movement, which is based on such ways of self-expression.

Surrealism Manifesto

The main ideas of the new artistic direction were outlined in the first Manifesto of Surrealism, which was written in 1924 by André Breton. Quotations from the document are sure to accompany any text about the history or program of this trend even today.

Surrealism in French means "super-reality". Breton defined his goal in his Manifesto as the most thorough removal of the border between dream and reality (and here it is difficult not to notice the consonance with Freud's ideas). A little later, in the essay "Surrealism and Painting", Andre will confirm the title of the new direction not as an artistic style, but as a way of life and thoughts, free from the obsessive and artificial principles of logic and morality inherent in the culture of that time.

Main method

Breton offered his comrades a new way of creating a work of art, especially poetry and prose. They became "automatic writing" - a method of free expression of thoughts without restraining and limiting control of the mind, aesthetics or morality. With his help, back in 1920, Andre Breton, together with Philippe Soupault, wrote "Magic Fields", published in the journal "Literature".

In its full expression, "automatic writing" was supposed to represent creativity, not influenced by taste preferences, subjective perception, momentary mood. It is free from internal and external influences, it is a pure thought, without impurities and restrictions.

The ideologue of surrealism was able to transform "automatic writing" for the needs of fine arts. Andre Breton likened the paintings in a sense to the text. Under the influence of his ideas, world-famous artists created their masterpieces even today.

Breton has practically no paintings in the usual sense of the word. You can think of "Paracelsus", a playing card with the image of two octopuses, created by Andre before leaving for the USA, or "Surrealist landscape", written during his Dada period.

However, the most interesting graphic works of the author are socalled poems, embodying the synthesis of visual art and poetry. Words in them were replaced by specific objects. After many experiments, Breton came to the conclusion that images are much better at conveying meaning. True, the author always supplied his poems with verbal comments.

Authoritarian leader

Breton didn't have an accommodating character. Many of his associates rebelled against the harshness of the leader's dictatorship and left the movement. They were always replaced by new ones. Thus, Aragon and Supo gave way to Buñuel and Dali. By that time (the 30s of the last century), the Literature magazine had received a new name, The Surrealist Revolution, Breton's novel Nadia, illustrated by the author (1928, one of the author's most famous works), and the already mentioned essay " Surrealism and Painting" (1928), as well as the essay "Revolution First and Forever" (1925). Surrealism as an unusual, "fresh" lifestyle and way of understanding reality began to spread throughout the world.

New adherents of the direction brought with them additional forces and ideas. The influence of surrealism in general and Breton in particular on art only intensified. André's significance is especially vividly illustrated by the fact that after his death the direction did not last long, just a few years.

Recent years

During World War II, Breton lived in the United States, where he continuedcreate and approve surrealism. Together with Duchamp and Ernst, he opened the International Art Exhibition. He lectured on surrealism at Yale University. In 1945 Breton returned to France. Here he actively sought to recreate the former movement, but his attempts were in vain.

After returning to France, Andre participated in the Paris exhibitions, wrote many prose and poetic works ("Arcane 17", "Ode to Charles Fourier", "Lamp in the clock", "Poems" and so on). Biographers also note the increased interest of the surrealist ideologue in the last twenty years of his life in the occult. In 1966 (September 28) he died of pneumonia.

Influence

It's easy to understand what Andre Breton remembered in the first place. Paintings with titles and illustrations by the master are not so easy to find. Today Breton is, first of all, the founder of surrealism, a poet and prose writer, a master of words. His influence is noticeable in many literary movements of the middle and end of the last century. However, a large number of artists drew inspiration from the works of the master and continues to do so until now.

Everything that Andre Breton created: paintings, descriptions of the main ideas of the main artistic movement of the first half of the 20th century, journalistic and poetic works - embodied the principles of surrealism. Breton organized a new trend, combining the moods and trends of the culture of his era, and thus gave a powerful creative charge for the art of the future. Surrealism and todayinspires a large number of people to create new works in a variety of art directions, from painting and cinema to prose and music.