Minotaure

Minotaure. A journal of art and literature published in Paris between February 1933 and May 1939 (13 numbers appearing irregularly); it was devoted mainly to Surrealism and constituted the movement's most important journal in this period (which may be considered its zenith), following La Révolution surréaliste and Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution and preceding VVV. Albert Skira was the administrative director and Tériade was the artistic director; when Tériade left after the ninth issue (October 1936), Skira established an editorial committee that included Breton, Duchamp, and Éluard. The title was suggested by André Masson and the writer Georges Bataille (1897–1962), who at this time were, in Masson's words, ‘concerned with the most mysterious of the Greek and Iranian mythologies'. For the cover of the first issue Picasso created a collage that had at its centre a drawing of a minotaur holding a sword (MOMA, New York, 1933); among the other artists who designed covers for the journal were Derain, Ernst, Magritte, and Matisse. In keeping with such elevated company, Minotaure was luxuriously produced, the illustrations including original prints. Because of these high standards ‘It was possible for the first time outside exhibitions and exhibition catalogues to show lavishly a full range of surrealist painting and sculpture. There was work by Ernst, Tanguy, Dal', Miró and Masson, Arp, Giacometti, and a number of new artists who joined the movement in the thirties: Brauner, Bellmer, Paalen, Dominguez, Seligmann, Cornell, Matta … At the time of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936, Tériade reproduced works by the English surrealists … Hayter, Burra, Agar, Penrose, Nash, Moore. At the same time, Minotaure is rich in photography. Man Ray's photographs had … appeared in La Révolution surréaliste, but they were small and ghostly, while in Minotaure they are full, dramatic images’ (catalogue of the exhibition ‘Dada and Surrealism Reviewed', Hayward Gallery, London, 1978). Another eminent photographer, Brassaï, also made a major contribution to the journal.