The Birth of surrealism at the Café de Flore
(1913-1930)
Apollinaire, Aragon, André Breton…

Towards 1913, Apollinaire besieged the place. With Salmon, they transformed the first floor into a newspaper office: "les soirées de Paris" (Paris evenings), a review, was born.
The war didn't change anything concerning the great poet's habits, the Café was his office and he received people at fixed times. And, on a Spring day in 1917, he presented Philippe Soupault to André Breton. Later, by provoking the meeting between these two young poets with Aragon, Apollinaire laid the foundations of the dadaist movement. In the same year, he coined the word "surrealism". When Tristan Tzara arrived in Paris, his dadaist friends made him visit the Café because Apollinaire had lived and died there (in 1918).
In 1922, the editorial staff of the erudite review "Le Divan" regularly gathered on the Café's benches. Malraux drank his iced Pernod there.

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