César Moro

César Moro (August 31, 1903 – January 10, 1956) is the pseudonym of Alfredo Quíspez-Asín Mas, a Peruvian poet and painter. Most of his poetic works are written in French; he was the only Latin American poet included in the 1920s and '30s surrealist journals of André Breton and the first Latin American artist to join the surrealist group on his own initiative, as opposed to being recruited by Breton.

Life and career Moro moved to Paris on August 30, 1925, initially to pursue ballet dancing, but shortly after focused his artistic efforts on creating art and poetry. He participated in his first group exhibition at the Cabinet Maldoror in Brussels alongside Santos Balmori, Jaime Colson, and Isaías de Santiago. He contributed to the Surrealist artistic and literary movement while in France, becoming fully integrated into the group by the 1930s. He openly criticized the politics of the time by contributing writings to La mobilisation contre la guerre n'est pas la paix (Mobilization Against the War is Not Peace), an anti-war manifesto. Moro embraced the Surrealist's critiques of bourgeois social values and cultural hierarchies. He used Surrealist art and literature to "articulate his own marginality or sense of invisibility as a homosexual man negotiating his place in the international art world." The exhibition included work by artists from all over Europe, South America, and the United States. Four of Moro's artworks were included in the international section of the exposition, including Pedestrian (1926), Untitled Painting with the Inscription "Eluard" (1926), The Art of Reading the Future (1935), and Cover for the Blind (1939).

Works Selected works: 1926: Pedestrian (used as the cover of the Surrealist Exposition of South America catalogue) 1954: Trafalgar Square (illustrated by Remedios Varo) 1957: La tortuga ecuestre y otros poemas 1973: Amour à mort 1987: L'ombre du paradisier et autres textes