The closest Andre Breton has ever come to writing an autobiography, Conversations--based on a series of radio interviews conducted with the founder of Surrealism in 1952--chronicles the entire Surrealist movement as lived from within, tracing the origins and development of Surrealism from the discovery of automatic writing in 1919 to the Surrealists' ideological debate with communism and their opposition to Stalin.

Tracing the movement from its origins in the 1920s to its decline in the 1950s and 1960s, Durozoi tells the history of Surrealism through its activities, publications, and reviews, demonstrating its close ties to some of the most explosive political, as well as creative, debates of the twentieth century. Unlike other histories, which focus mainly on the pre-World War II years of the movement in Paris, Durozoi covers both a wider chronological and geographic range, treating in detail the postwar years and Surrealism's colonization of Latin America, the United States, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Italy, and North Africa. Drawing on documentary and visual evidence--including 1,000 photos, many of them in color--he illuminates all the intellectual and artistic aspects of the movement, from literature and philosophy to painting, photography, and film. All the Surrealist stars and their most important works are here--Aragon, Borges, Breton, Buñuel, Cocteau, Crevel, Dalí, Desnos, Ernst, Man Ray, Soupault, and many more--for all of whom Durozoi has provided brief biographical notes in addition to featuring them in the main text.

A revised edition of Whitney Chadwick’s seminal work on the women artists who shaped the Surrealist art movement. This pioneering book stands as the most comprehensive treatment of the lives, ideas, and art works of the remarkable group of women who were an essential part of the Surrealist movement. Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, and Dorothea Tanning, among many others, embodied their age as they struggled toward artistic maturity and their own “liberation of the spirit” in the context of the Surrealist revolution. Their stories and achievements are presented here against the background of the turbulent decades of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s and the war that forced Surrealism into exile in New York and Mexico. Whitney Chadwick, author of the highly acclaimed Women, Art, and Society, interviewed and corresponded with most of the artists themselves in the course of her research. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, now revised with a new foreword by art historian Dawn Ades, contains a wealth of extracts from unpublished writings and numerous illustrations never before reproduced. Since this book was first published, it has acquired the undeniable status of a classic among artists, art historians, critics, and cultural historians. It has inspired and necessitated a revision of the story of the Surrealist movement.

Gathers interviews with the leader of the surrealist movement, in which prepared statements offer his view of literature, art, politics, and his role in the movement

Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith A down and dirty survey of the Surrealist movement written in 1970 by the leading Situationist theorist of the time. Locating Surrealism's 'original sin' in its ideological nature, Vaneigem clearly identifies the 'radioactive fragment of radicalism' that the movement never quite managed to shed, and provides an unequivocal answer to the question 'What was alive and what was dead in Surrealism?' The Situationists attitudes both positive and negative, towards their Surrealist predecessors are revealed in full.