Andre Masson was born in Balagne, France on January 4,1896. He was an engraver, sculptor, stage designer and writer; he was one of the leading figures of Surrealism. He was admitted to the Academie Royale des Beaux-arts et l'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Brussels, Belgium at the age of eleven.

Masson was severely wounded in the First World War and was deeply scarred emotionally. His pessimism was accompanied by a profound and troubled curiosity about the nature and destiny of man and an obscure belief in the mysterious unity of the universe, to which he devoted the whole of his artistic activity to penetrating and expressing. In the early 1920s he was influenced by Cubism, but in 1924 he joined the Surrealist movement and remained a ...