André Breton wasn’t the first to use the term “Surrealism,” but the French writer became the movement’s godfather with the publication of his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto.
In the wake of World War I and the Spanish flu, Breton, along with his comrades, such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Max Ernst, looked for creative freedom amid what they saw as an oppressive modern society plagued by an excess of rationality.
