André Breton

(1896 - 1966)

The French writer André Breton produced his first surrealist manifesto in 1924; after publishing a sequel, he continued to expand on the topic for the rest of his life. He defined surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”