The International Surrealist Movement in Mexico. First Steps: 1925-1939

Abstract

Surrealism was one of the most relevant artistic movements of the 20th century, its proposals on automatism, dreams, and irrationality as creative principles, were attractive and controversial for intellectual and artist circles, even reaching the political sphere due to their sympathy with the Marxist postulates and the social revolution that they proclaimed. The activism carried out by the surrealists in the printed media, and that carried out by their leader André Breton, achieved rapid expansion in different countries, with news of this movement reaching Mexico approximately in the year 1925. At first it was thought to be a more of the avant-garde in vogue at that time, but over time it became a benchmark for innovation for those who wanted to venture into the plastic arts. Its development occurred within the framework of a series of paradoxes, hence the objective of this article was to briefly analyze the historical journey of surrealism in its beginnings in Mexico, and the contradictions that arose within it, in the period of the twenties and thirties, for this purpose this work had a qualitative approach, using as a basis for its study method the recourse to primary sources of hemerographic information and documentary research of specialized texts with the corresponding hermeneutical treatment. It was concluded that although the country was declared a surreal place par excellence, in its first steps it approaches primitivism as a form of expression that tries to move away from modernism.