Automatism and Psychoanalysis in the Pages of the London Bulletin (1938-40): From Herbert Read to Humphrey Jennings

The first issue of the journal London Bulletin was published in 1938 and quickly became the voice of surrealist artists in England, offering them a suitable platform for sharing their artistic experimentations. The London Bulletin was published between 1938 and 1940, in the crucial months that preceded the outbreak of the Second World War, when England had become a place of refuge for many artists and intellectuals who fled from totalitarian regimes. Founded by Belgian surrealist artist E.L.T. Mesens, together with English painter and collector Roland Penrose, the journal was meant to complement the activities of the London Gallery, which the two colleagues had purchased at the end of 1937 with the intention of spreading surrealist artworks across the Channel. A total of twenty numbers was published between April 1938 and June 1939, a period which coincided with the activities of the London Gallery while it was located on Cork Street; the last issue, instead, went to press in June 1940, a year after the gallery was forced to close down because of the war.