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[We thought about it for a long time...]

Undated letter [1934]

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Author

Author Salvador Dalí
Letter to André Breton
Person cited René Crevel

Description

Handwritten letter from Salvador Dalí to André Breton, undated, filed in a folder ‘Question Dalí affair’.
The Dalí affair, between the end of January and the beginning of March 1934, involved the painter accused of having made fascist remarks. As he defended himself, as several letters sent to Breton in this file attest, it quickly became apparent that the question went far beyond his individual case. In fact, against a backdrop of social unrest (see the Nice letters from Tzara and Éluard on this point), the surrealists were brought to clarify their position vis-à-vis the Third International. A difficult thing, because the AEAR affair, the previous year, had left some traces, with the Stalinist infiltration of this association’s institutions having resulted in the departure of Breton and his friends. Thus, a subtle distinction emerged between the cultural policy of the Third International, which almost everyone rejected, and its political options, which were better accepted by the members of the group. The Dalí question was thus taken in a context of a more general crisis, inside and outside a movement finding some difficulty, as Crevel wrote, in making ‘the synthesis of the poetic and the political’. Letters, telegrams, meeting reports, official declarations comprise a fascinating file. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten letter, filed by Breton in a folder titled ‘Question Dalí affair’.
- Signed letter from Salvador Dalí to André Breton, 1 page in-12, handwritten and signed twice in ink in which Dalí ‘very sadly’ agrees in principle to his future exclusion from the surrealist group. [auction catalogue, 2003, translation by Christina Heflin, 2023]