Elisa Breton

Elisa Breton Bindorff (b. Viña del Mar in Chile, 25 April 1906, d. Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, 5 April 2000), was a French artist and writer, and the third wife of the French writer and surrealist André Breton.

Biography

The accomplished pianist Elisa Bindorff married the Chilean politician Benjamin Claro. They had a daughter, Ximena. After her divorce, she immigrated to the United States with her daughter. On 13 August 1943 during a boat trip off the coast of Massachusetts, Ximena drowned. After a suicide attempt, Elisa was joined in New York by a friend who came from Chile to support her.

On 9 or 10 December 1943, they went to a French restaurant on 56th Street in Manhattan. Breton lived in the same street, and frequented this restaurant. He noticed Elisa, presented himself as a French writer and asked permission to exchange a few words with her. The attraction was mutual:

Quand le sort t'a portée à ma rencontre, la plus grande ombre était en moi et je puis dire que c'est en moi que cette fenêtre s'est ouverte ("When fate has brought you to meet me, the greatest shadow was in me, and I can say that it is in me that this window has been opened.")

In the summer of 1944, they travelled in the Gaspé Peninsula in the northeast of Canada. From September to October, Breton wrote Arcane 17, a poetic work combining declarations of love for Elisa with philosophical, historical and mythological considerations. After the publication of the book, Breton dubbed the manuscript, "this book of high truancy." In August 1945, for practical reasons, André Breton and Elisa Bindorff married in Reno, Nevada. On this occasion, they visited Hopi Indian reservations. They returned to France on May 25, 1946.

In Paris, Elisa Breton participated in the surrealist journals Médium and Le Surréalisme même, at the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the gallery of Daniel Cordier (December 1959-January 1960) and at an exhibition dedicated to collages, drawings and prints at the Le Ranelagh gallery (1965).

In the shadow of the theorist of surrealism, she expressed her talent by making surrealist boxes.

Selected works

Surrealist boxes

• La Loi du vison, 1959
• Oiseau de plastique, ressort de réveil, dé à jouer, 1970
• Lucy, faire, 1971
• Ne quittez pas, 1972
• Oiseau-lire, 1973
• Méduse, sculpture, 1959

Writing

• Preface to the exhibition catalog devoted to the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, 1949
• Translation of Alpha et omega by Edvard Munch, éd. Le Nyctalope, 1980
• André Breton, album of ten original photographs signed by Elisa, éd. Au fil de l'encre, Paris, 1993

Bibliography

• Henri Béhar, André Breton, le grand indésirable, Paris, Fayard, 2005, pp. 406 ff.
• Georgiana Colvile, Scandaleusement d'elles. Trente-quatre femmes surréalistes, Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1999. ISBN 2858934967, pp. 42 ff., with a portrait by the photographer Dora Maar
• Étienne-Alain Hubert, André Breton, œuvres complètes, tome 3 : notice, pp. 1161–1199
• Mark Polizzoti, André Breton, Paris, Gallimard, 1995, pp. 593 ff.

Citations

• André Breton, Arcane 17, in Œuvres complètes, tome 3, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1999, pp. 35–111.