Which surrealist artist was expelled from the movement by André Breton in 1939?

The surrealist artist expelled from the movement by André Breton in 1939 was Salvador Dalí.

Dalí joined the Surrealist group in Paris in 1929 and became one of its most technically accomplished members. His “paranoiac-critical” method—using self-induced associations and multiple images—helped produce some of his best-known paintings, including The Persistence of Memory.

His relationship with the group deteriorated over politics, including accusations of sympathy toward Hitler and his refusal to take a clear anti-fascist position. After Francisco Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, Dalí praised Catholicism and the Falange. Breton subsequently announced Dalí’s expulsion in the May 1939 issue of Minotaure, citing his political positions and what Breton saw as a rejection of Surrealist automatism.

Dalí continued to use the Surrealist label in public, but the group’s leaders increasingly treated him as an outsider. In 1949, Breton coined “Avida Dollars,” an anagram of Salvador Dalí, to mock what he regarded as the artist’s commercialism.