Surrealism

Surrealism, a literary and artistic movement, was born after the 1st World War. André Breton defined surrealism in the Manifesto of Surrealism, published in 1924, as “pure psychic automatism by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other way, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, without any aesthetic or moral preoccupation”.

Some intellectuals, notably Christian Dotremont in Belgium, felt that the Surrealist movement had stalled. After the 2nd World War, dissident protesters founded the surrealist-revolutionary movement in 1947.

Meeting for the first time at an International Conference in Brussels on October 29, 30 and 31, 1947, the Surrealist-Revolutionary Group in Belgium, the Experimental Group in Denmark, the Surrealist-Revolutionary Group in France and the Ra Group in Czechoslovakia recognized a number of points, in particular that, on a national level, the Communist Party was the only revolutionary body.

Numerous artists contributed to the magazine “Le Surréalisme révolutionnaire”: Oscar Dominguez, Pierre Soulages, Edouard Jaguer, René Magritte, Tristan Tzara, Raoul Hausmann…