ABSTRACT

Breton in his introduction to the first Paris

exhibition of 1929, ‘it is perhaps the first time

that the mental windows have been opened

really wide, so that one can feel oneself glid-

ing up towards the wild sky’s trap.’ For

Surrealism it was a year of crisis and redirec-

tion. Since the movement’s inception in

1924 the emphasis had been on automatism

and the advantage of chance discovery as a

contribution in artistic and literary creation.

The Surrealists were to draw their inspiration

not from reality but from a ‘purely interior

model’. But it was becoming increasingly

apparent that the process had inherent weak-

nesses. The essentially passive role in which

the writer and painter became instruments no

longer had any validity. That ‘state of effer-

vescence’ had degenerated into repetition,

monotony and disillusionment. It did not

mean a lack of faith in the process, but rather

a recognition that it no longer constituted for

Surrealism an end in itself. Dalı´ fully shared

the Surrealists’ commitment to the automatic

processes, which he had read about in various

reviews and catalogues. In 1927, according to

his own The Secret Life of Salvador Dalı´ (1942),