Breton's letter to Mark Ristic in "Rima" on the occasion of the century of surrealism

The international commemoration of the centenary of Surrealism in Serbia begins with the "Rima" Gallery in Belgrade. Tonight, Wednesday, the letter of Andre Breton, which he wrote on March 28, 1932 to Marko Ristic and the editors of the magazine "Surrealism today and here", will be presented for the first time, in response to the "Desire Survey".

This letter is extremely important in the history of surrealism because it is the last testimony of the joint involvement of the two movements, which had an almost equal position on the surrealist map of Europe between 1930 and 1932. The letter contains answers to seven questions from the "Desire Survey", published in the second issue of that magazine in January 1932. Besides Breton's, among the 24 responses acceptable to the editors, the responses of René Crevel, Paul Eliard and Salvador Dali, sent especially for the third and last issue of the NDIO magazine, published in June of the same year, are of particular importance.

After the death of Marko Ristic, that and many other Breton letters and documents from Ristic's legacies every trace is lost until October 2023, when it appears in Paris at the auction Mille nuits de reves VI with curiosities from the collection of Geneviève and Jean-Paul Kahn (Geneviève & Jean-Paul Kahn). It is assumed that it was returned to Paris from Belgrade through the daughter of Marko and Ševa Ristić.

"I found out by chance that there will be an auction in Paris, that a private collection of exhibits related to Andre Breton and the Italian Futurists will be sold, and that Breton's letter will be among them," owner and founder Aleksandar Milojević told Vreme. "Rima" galleries.

He says that before the auction the letter was on display in an antiquarian bookstore and that he learned there that it was better not to participate in the auction.

"I was told that France will not allow what is its cultural heritage to leave the country, so they will not give that letter from Btreton either, regardless of the fact that it is intended for Marko Ristic." Of course, that increased my motivation to return the letter to Belgrade."

Aleksandar Milojević says that "at the auction, the interest in that letter was higher than I expected, so I increased the planned limit twice".

Now it is in Belgrade, it will be at the exhibition in "Rima" until May 21, and after that it will become part of the otherwise large private collection of Aleksandar Milojević.

"Belgrade movement of surrealism  was one of the most important outside of France, and our intention is to complete the entire picture of surrealism with this exhibition, Milojević says and notes that thanks to the long-term correspondence of the two main protagonists of French and Serbian surrealism - Andre Breton and Marko Ristic, these two movements during their collective action Belgrade groups functioned as one.

Gallery "Rima" will participate in a large exhibition announced for October by the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Applied Art and the Language Institute, which will join the international celebration of the centenary of Surrealism.