André Breton

Born in 1896 in France, André Breton studied medicine and worked in neurological wards during World War I, experiences that helped spark his interest in psychology, dreams, and the unconscious. He later turned fully toward literature and the Paris avant-garde, where he formed close ties with writers and artists who were searching for new ways to break with convention.

Breton is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism. Through his poems, essays, novels, and manifestos, he argued for a kind of art shaped by free association, surprise, and the liberating force of the imagination. His novel Nadja and the Manifesto of Surrealism remain among his best-known works, and his influence reached far beyond literature into painting, film, and modern thought.

He spent part of World War II in exile and continued writing and organizing around Surrealist ideas for the rest of his life. When he died in 1966, he had left behind not just a body of work, but a whole way of thinking about art as a means of discovering deeper realities.