One hundred years ago, in a tiny studio flat in a bohemian district of Paris, a former medical student turned writer set out to define surrealism “for once and for all”. In his Manifesto of Surrealism André Breton called for a new kind of art and literature fired by the unconscious, “the dictation of thought free from any control by reason, exempt from aesthetic or moral preoccupation”.
Far from settling surrealism “for once and for all”, the handwritten document was a departure point for a sprawling, subversive movement of bad dreams, haunting landscapes, fantastical alien creatures, unsettling portraits and visual tricks. Now, a century later, a major exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, opening in September, will celebrate how surrealism spread around the world, far beyond the environs of the French capital.
