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Letter of invitation to participants

Letter dated Paris, 12 January 1947

Archives

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Alphonse Allais, Jean-Valentin Andreae, Guillaume Apollinaire, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Hyeronimus Bosch, André Breton, Jean-Paul Brisset, Lewis Carroll, Joseph-Ferdinand Cheval, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio De Chirico, Apollonius de Thyane, Oscar Dominguez, George Du Maurier, Marcel Duchamp, Eckhart, Xavier Forneret, Charles Fourier, James George Frazer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Marie-Jean-Léon Lecoq, dit d'Hervey de Saint-Denys, Friedrich Hölderlin, Alfred Jarry, Marcel Jean, Franz Kafka, Frederick John Kiesler, Isidore Ducasse, dit comte de Lautréamont, Richard Lefebvre-Desnouettes ou Lefebvre des Noëttes, Alphonse-Louis Constant, dit Eliphas Lévi, Georg-Christoph Lichtenberg, Aimé Maeght, René Magritte, André Masson, Roberto Echauren Matta, Charles-Robert Maturin, Wolfgang Paalen, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Henri, dit le Douanier Rousseau, Raymond Roussel, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Pierre Schweitzer, Emmanuel Swedenborg

Description

Typed letter signed by André Breton and dated 12 January 1947.

This letter, sent by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp and inviting artists to participate in the exhibition Surrealism in 1947 (to be held at the Maeght Gallery in July), defined what was at stake in surrealist activity as the expression of a ‘new myth’. The two organisers, who took a chance by inviting many newcomers, insisted that it should have an overall cohesion and moreover be conceived on the model of initiation. We know that the exhibition was envisaged as a set of rooms each of which would have its own coherence (whose design would be entrusted to a particular artist), the pinnacle of which would be twelve altars, as Breton specifies, without intending to establish a new ‘cult’ as an objective. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Invitation letter to the participants, International Exhibition of Surrealism, Paris 12 January 1947.
Typescript of a text published in the catalogue Le surréalisme en 1947 (pages 135-8) with the title ‘Initial Projet’. [Sale catalogue, 2003]

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson.

Bibliography

André Breton et Marcel Duchamp, « Projet initial », Le Surréalisme en 1947, Paris, Maeght, 1947, pages 135 à 138.

Place of origin

Exhibition place