SURREALIST CHRONOLOGY

1913

New York - February 17-March. Armory Show. International Exhibition of Modern Art. Included in the exhibit are Duchamp's Portrait of Chess Players (1911), The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912), and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) and attracted much attention and controversy. Picabia exhibits Cubist-inspired works, Dances at Spring and Procession, Seville (both 1912).

Paris -  Duchamp paints Chocolate Grinder I which marks the break with the canvases of 1912 and establishes the basis of the Large Glass. Renounces oil painting, secures a minor post in the Bibliotheque Ste.-Genevieve, makes his first Readymade, Bicycle Wheel.

1914

New York - November 3 - December 8. Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession. Negro Art. An exhibition of African wood carvings, reported in Camera Work as "the first time in the history of exhibitions, either in this country or elsewhere, that Negro statuary was shown solely from the point of view of art."

1915

New York - March. The periodical 291, edited by Paul Haviland and Mauius de Zayas, begins to appear, under Stieglitz's auspices.

Zurich - Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco settle in Zurich. Arp begins collaboration with his future wife, Sophie Taeuber.

November. Gallery Tanner. Joint exhibition of Arp, Otto van Rees, and Mme van Rees. Arp, Otto van Rees. Arp shows precisely executed rectilinear collages and writes a preface to the catalogue.

1916

Nantes - Jacques Vache and Andre Breton meet. Breton is an orderly in an army mental clinic, where he becomes interested in psychiatry.

Zurich - April. The word "Dada" discovered.

July 14. Salle zur Waag. First Dada Soiree. An evening of music, dances, manifestations, poetry readings, costumes, masks, paintings. Tzara reads the first Dada manifesto.

Arp confirms his biomorphic style, begun the previous year, in wood reliefs (Forest, Portrait of Tzara) and "automatic" drawings. Begins collages "arranged according to the laws of chance."

Cologne - Max Ernst, serving as an artillery engineer in the German army, makes occasional small paintings.

1917

New York - April 10-May 6. Grand Central Palace. First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (open exhibition). Picabia exhibits Physical Culture and Music Is Like Painting. Duchamp sends a urinal (Readymade) titled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt" and it mysteriously ends up in a dumpster. Duchamp resigns from the jury.

Paris - May. Theatre du Chatelet. First performance of Erik Satie's ballet, Parade, with scenario by Cocteau, choreography by Massine, decor and costumes by Picasso. The program contains an article by Apollinaire in which the earliest reference to "sur-realisme" appears.

1918

New York - Duchamp paints his last (not really his last) picture, Tu m', a frieze-shaped canvas slightly over ten feet wide for Katherine Dreir's library. Man Ray begins his "Aerographs," executed with an air gun.

Berlin - June. Kurt Schwitters seeks out Herwarth Walden to examine the possibility of exhibiting at Der Sturm gallery. Meets Arp, which leads to a close association with the Zurich Dadaists.

1919

Paris - October. Litterature publishes (continuing in the November and December issues) "Les Champs magnetiques," by Breton and Soupault, later described by Breton as "incontestably the first Surrealist work (in no way Dada) since it is the fruit of the first systematic applications of automatic writing."

Hanover - Kurt Schwitters makes his first Merz collages, books, and poems; publishes Anna Blume, a poem formed by "collaging" the clichés of bourgeois sentimental language.

1920

Cologne - Ernst collaborates with Arp, and also with Baargeld, on a series of collages that they call "Fatagaga" (FAbrication de TAbleaux GArantis GAzometriques [Manufacture of Pictures Guaranteed To Be Gasometric]).

1921

New York - Man Ray invents his "Rayographs"; makes Dada objects, such as Gift.

Paris - June 6-30. Galerie Montaigne. Salon Dada, Exposition Internationale, End of season Dada exhibition and series of demonstrations. Catalogue, which lists 81 works, contains contributions from poets and artists including, among others, Arp, Aragon, Eluard, Peret, Man Ray, Tzara. Soupault's entry in the exhibition is a mirror entitled Portrait of an Unknown; slips of paper with numbers take the place of the works Duchamp refused to send. Tzara's Le Coeur a gaz (The Gas-Operated Heart) given for the first time. The last major Dada show.

1923

Paris - Breton and his circle dispute the use of the term "surrealism" with Ivan Goll and Paul Dermee, who had also adopted it from Apollinaire. Masson meets Breton and makes first automatic drawings. Toward the end of the year Miro begins his transition from Cubism to Surrealism.

1924

Paris - Miro joins the Surrealists and is introduced to Arp's work. Breton publishes Manifeste du surrealisme in which Surrealism is defined primarily in terms of automatism. 

1925

Paris - Tanguy joins the Surrealists. Beginning of the collective drawing and poem on folded paper called cadavre exquis (expuisite corpse).

1926

New York - Duchamp's Large Glass is broken on its return from an exhibition of modern art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Paris - Picasso reflects first influence of Surrealism.

Madrid - Dali paints The Basket of Bread in detailed but visionary realism. Begins to exhibit in Madrid and Barcelona; is permanently expelled from the Madrid School of Fine Arts.

1927

Paris - Breton publishes Introduction au discours sur le peu de realite, probably written in 1924, in which he raises the question of "Surrealist objects."

August. Magritte joins the Surrealist milieu.

Madrid - Dali, having become interested in Surrealism largely through its publications, begins to work in a new and Surrealist-influenced manner.

1929

Paris - Man Ray makes film Les Mysteres du Chateau de De at the home of the vicomte de Noailles. Giacometti officially joins the Surrealist circle.

October1-December 5. Studio 28. First public showing of Un Chien Andalou, a disturbing film.

1930

Paris - Arp makes first small sculptures in the round; begins "torn papers." At the end of November L'Age d'Or, a film made by Bunuel and Dali, is shown at Studio 28. After a few showings it provokes a violent rights riot, ink is thrown at the screen, seats are destroyed, and the Surrealist paintings exhibited in the entrance hall (Dali, Ernst, Miro, Tanguy) are damaged and destroyed. The film is banned by the police.

1931

Hartford, Connecticut - November. Wadsworth Atheneum. Newer Super-Realism. First important Surrealist exhibition in the United States; 50 works, including de Chirico, Dali, Ernst, Masson, Miro, Picasso.

1933

Paris - Surrealist group show at the Salon des Surindependants includes Arp, Brauner, Dali, Ernst, Giacometti, Valentine Hugo, Magritte, Miro, Oppenheim, Man Ray, Tanguy, Trouille. Kandinsky participates as guest of honor.

1934

New York - November. Dali makes his first trip to the United States. Julien Levy Gallery, Paintings by Salvador Dali.

Paris - January. Dali is officially censured by the Surrealists for his interest in Nazism and his Hitlerian fantasies, but continues to participate in the Surrealists' exhibitions.

1935

New York - January 11. The Museum of Modern Art. Salvador Dali gives an illustrated lecture, Surrealist Painting: Paranoiac Images, translated from the French by Julien Levy.

London - David Gascoyne publishes A Short Survey of Surrealism, the first book in English devoted entirely to Surrealism.

1936

New York - December 9, 1936-January 17, 1937. The Museum of Modern Art. Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. Exhibition directed by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., accompanied by an extensively illustrated catalogue, provokes popular controversy.

1938

Mexico - February. Breton, on a lecture tour, stays at the house of Diego Rivera where he meets Rivera's other guest, Leon Trotsky.

1939

London - July 19. Dali, brought to visit Freud by Stefan Zweig, makes a sketch of Freud and maintains that Freud's cranium is reminiscent of a snail. The next day Freud writes to Zweig: "....until now I have been inclined to regard the Surrealists, who have apparently adopted me as their patron saint, as complete fools....That young Spaniard, with his candid fanatical eyes and his undeniable technical mastery, has changed my estimate. It would indeed be very interesting to investigate analytically how he came to create that picture."

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