Salvador Dali

Did you know…..

That in 1925 a group of French artists and writers signed a “manifesto” in the name of what they called the “surrealist revolution“?

This manifesto of the group of surrealist artists and writers addressed to the directors of psychiatric hospitals in France. Among other things they wrote the following:

“Tomorrow, at the time of the visit, when you try, without the help of your lexicon, to communicate with these men, you can remember and recognize that you only have a superiority over them: strength.”

The voice was raised by the inhuman conditions in which the mentally ill lived in the insane asylums of that time.

Philippe Pinel, the eminent French doctor, removed the chains to the madmen of the Bicêtre asylum in the eighteenth century. In this and other asylums it was usual to keep the mentally ill tied with chains.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)