André Breton.

In 1914, André Breton enrolled in Sorbonne Medical School, studying neurology and psychiatry under the influence of Sigmund Freud. He was drafted in 1915 during World War I and served in a neurological ward, where he met Guillaume Apollinaire. He was born on February 18, 1896, in Tinchebray, Normandy, the only child of a government clerk and a shopkeeper.

Breton and Philippe Soupault published Les Champs Magnétiques in 1919, an early example of automatic writing. In 1921, he met Freud in Vienna and later used psychoanalysis to analyze patients and art. He became editor of La Revolution surrealiste in 1924 and issued the Manifeste du Surréalisme. During the 1930s, he collaborated with Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera on a manifesto for revolutionary art. After World War II, he returned to France and continued writing poetry and prose, culminating in Constellations 1959.

Breton married three times: first to Simone Kahn, then to Jacqueline Lamba, with whom he had a daughter, Aube Elléouët, and finally to Elisabeth Bindhoff. He was expelled from the French Communist Party in 1935 due to his criticism of Stalin. During the war, he lived in the United States, founding the magazine VVV with Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst.

André Breton founded Surrealism with his 1924 manifesto. The manifesto defined Surrealism and influenced artists including Salvador Dalí and Louis Buñuel. He died in Paris on September 28, 1966, and is buried in Cimetière des Batignolles. His writings and Surrealist ideas continue to shape art and literature.