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Celebrating 100 Years of Surrealism

Posted on 15 Oct 2024

15 October marks the day, 100 years ago, when André Breton published his groundbreaking 'Surrealist Manifesto', jumpstarting an artistic movement that shook up the world into the present day.

When André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto on 15 October 1924, the global landscape was one of recovery and survival as people reckoned with the aftermath of the First World War. Breton, a French poet and writer, wanted to challenge how people thought; he felt that logical thinking was the root cause of the problems the world faced. The creative unconscious was where humanity’s strength lay.

In his manifesto, Breton 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 thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.’

It was a shocking idea at the time, but a desire to escape from the dark realities of life also made it a captivating one.

What followed was an artistic movement that reached far and wide, across continents and even genres. Surrealism shook up the art world and made global noise around some of its key players: Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, and Man Ray to name a few.

In the last 100 years, Surrealism has found roots in photography, cinema, television, advertising, and fully engrained itself in the cultural zeitgeist. As Desmond Morris explains in his new book 101 Surrealists, there is a reason why ‘when something unusual occurs, instead of saying, “That was so strange”, it is common practice to say, “That was so surreal.”

Thames & Hudson has a long history of publishing books on Surrealism and the artists who contributed to it, as early as the 1960s.

Our World of Art title, Miró was written by Surrealist artist Roland Penrose. Penrose also helped to curate the International Surrealist Exhibition at Burlington Galleries in 1936 – the first Surrealist art show in Britain and attended by André Breton himself.

Originally published in the 1980s, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement by Whitney Chadwick helped to reignite interest in the careers of women artists like Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquohoun and Eileen Agar.

We have continued to publish a breadth of titles on the Surrealist Movement and the artists who have contributed to it over the last century. To celebrate 100 years since Breton’s manifesto, why not dive in?

See the full reading list on Bookshop.org