Andre Breton, Dada & Surrealism

Dada, also known as Dadaism, is a movement launched in Zurich in 1916 to protest against bourgeois society. The movement was founded by Tristan Tzara, a Rumanian born French poet, and acted via several independent groups in New York, Berlin, Paris, etc. The movement united such figures as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Hans Arp, poets André Breton, Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon. Among the ideas of Dada was a rejection of conventions in art and thought, the goal of the movement was to shock society into self-awareness using unorthodox techniques and the experiments with anti-logical poetry and collage pictures and sculptures.

Dada movement was not long-lived but it's ideas and values found their realization in the surrealism the origin of which is closely connected with the activity of one of the Dadaism groups member Andre Breton. Andre Breton' «Manifesto of Surrealism» started the group of surrealists to which such artists as Salvador Dali, Eileen Agar, Paul Edouard, Gala Edouard, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and others were included. Apart from Dada impact the movement was also influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis theories. Such event as «Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism» exhibition in 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York became one of the major exhibitions in the 1930s.

Andre Breton's «Manifesto of Surrealism» became the matter that brought together some of the most creative and original minds of the 20th century. In this work Breton intensified the theoretical conclusions that resulted from his experiments. Thus, with the help of «Manifesto» France got acquainted with Freudian ideas.

Andre Breton, in addition to «Manifesto of Surrealism», is also known as the author of such works: Le Surréalisme et la peinture (1928, 1945, 1965), by L'Art magique (1957), Constellations (1959), the Second Manifeste du surréalisme (1930), Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme? (1934), and also the collections of essays and articles.

Breton's activity had great influence on surrealism movement development, which impacted painting and many other spheres. Painting of that period is closely associated with such names as Hans Arp, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia, Pablo, Picasso, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters and Yves Tanguy. The paintings of these artists utterly reveal the principles and ideas of the movement. However, the movement, although somewhat transformed, exists in a number of contemporary creative works today. If you are interested in today's artists paintings visit the gallery presented on klinkov.com web site!