Abstract
The foundation of the Czech Surrealist Group in March 1934 had been in the making at least since 1929, the time when Devětsil broke up and the Left Front was founded. At the time when Surrealist Group was being bounded, Nezval and Teige made a point of the evolutionary line within the Czech avant-garde that led up to Surrealism, but was by no means at an end.
That line included the Romantic/Symbolist forebears of Surrealism, with Karel Hynek Mácha at their head. However, what is important from the socio-cultural point of view is the international activity of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, notably their close collaboration with the Paris Surrealists, made manifest in April 1935 during André Breton and Paul Eluard's stay in Prague.
Like the French Surrealists, those of Czechoslovakia had to face up to the ideologies and terror of totalitarian dictatorship in Stalinist Russia and Hitlerite Germany.