As with other historical avant-gardes at the turn of the century, the movement’s intentions were introduced by literati, even before visual artists, in the journal Littérature founded by André Breton (Tinchebray, 1896 - Paris, 1966), Louis Aragon (Paris, 1897 - 1982) and Philippe Soupault (Chaville, 1897 - Paris, 1990).
Surrealism was a European avant-garde literary and artistic movement that arose in Paris in the 1920s and spread internationally until the outbreak of World War II, covering everything from literature to painting, sculpture and photography to theater and film. As with other historical avant-gardes at the turn of the century, the movement’s intentions were introduced by literati, even before visual artists, in the journal Littérature founded by André Breton (Tinchebray, 1896 - Paris, 1966), Louis Aragon (Paris, 1897 - 1982) and Philippe Soupault (Chaville, 1897 - Paris, 1990). This group of intellectuals, after initially joining the Dadaism movement and supporting its spirit of subverting traditional art categories, techniques and modes of enjoyment, began to take an interest in the themes of the irrational and the unconscious, which were becoming more widespread in those years thanks to the discoveries of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud.