André Breton (1896 – 1966) was a French writer and poet, best known as an original member of the DadaDada was an avant-garde art movement formed in the early 20th century in Zürich in reaction to the horrors of the First World War. The Dada artists believed that the war called into question any aspect of their society including the creation of art, therefore aiming at the demolition of traditional artistic values. On this basis, a new form of More group and one of the founders of the SurrealismSurrealism was a 20th-century philosophical, literary, and artistic movement seeking to channel the unconscious to access the imaginary. Proponents of Surrealism rejected the notion of understanding life in rational and conventional terms in favour of asserting the value of the unconscious mind, dreams, the strangely beautiful, and the uncanny. André Breton, the leader of a group of poets and artists More movement. His seminal writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surréalisme), published 1924, in which he defined surrealismSurrealism was a 20th-century philosophical, literary, and artistic movement seeking to channel the unconscious to access the imaginary. Proponents of Surrealism rejected the notion of understanding life in rational and conventional terms in favour of asserting the value of the unconscious mind, dreams, the strangely beautiful, and the uncanny. André Breton, the leader of a group of poets and artists More as “pure psychic automatism“, encouraging chance and spontaneity in artistic practices. Breton aimed to channel the unconscious to unlock creativity and imagination. Strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud’s emphasis on the importance of dreams and the unconscious, he believed that rational thinking suppressed the power of expression.
Besides authoring books, Breton worked in various creative media including collage and printmaking, striving to unite text and image. His conceptual work about ways of accessing the unconscious served as fundamental inspiration for artists such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Joan Miró. His influence further expanded on a global scale, especially in the post-World-War-II period in the movement of Abstract ExpressionismThe term Abstract Expressionism is applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning, flourishing between 1943 and the mid-1950s. Since Abstract Expressionism marked the beginning of New York City as the centre of the Western art world, the movement is also known as the New York School. More in the United States.