Jacques Baron was a French surrealist poet whose first collection of poems was published in Aventure in 1921. Although he was initially involved with the Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

 movement, he became a founding member of the Surrealist movement following his meeting with André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 in 1921, and contributed to La Révolution surréaliste

La Révolution surréaliste

La Révolution surréaliste was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929....

. In 1927, like many of his contemporaries, Baron joined the Cercle Communiste Démocratique. Although fascinated by dream-like states of the nomadic unconscious and other imaginary worlds of the “marvelous”, a dispute with Breton in 1929 got him expelled from the movement, and prompted him to contribute to Un Cadavre

Un Cadavre

Un Cadavre was the name of two separate surrealist pamphlets published in France in October of 1924, and January of 1930, respectively.-Pamphlet of October 18th, 1924:...

, an anti-Breton pamphlet. After the break with Surrealism, Baron became associated with Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...

 and Documents, in which he published a short essay on "Crustaceans for the Critical Dictionary" (1929, issue 6), an article on the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1930, issue 1), and a poem dedicated to Picasso, "Flames" (1930, issue 3). He later collaborated on a number of reviews such as Le Voyage en Grèce, La Critique Sociale and Minotaure

Minotaure

Minotaure, published between 1933 and 1939, was a Surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira in Paris. The editors were André Breton and Pierre Mabille. It was a luxurious publication, sporting original artworks on its cover by prestigious artists like Pablo Picasso...

. Baron also wrote a novel, Charbon de mer (1935), a mémoire, L’An 1 du Surréalisme (1969), and a collection of poems, L’Allure poétique (1973).