Paris shrine of surrealism dismantled

Despite more than 30 years of campaigning by leading European artists and writers, the removal workers have emptied a small Paris flat which was seen as the hallowed heart of surrealism.

The movement's manifesto was drawn up in 1924 in the rooms of André Breton at 42, Rue de Fontaine. Thousands of paintings, documents, photographs and personal souvenirs were carried away to warehouses, destroying what was seen as a surrealist work of art in itself.

Breton was 70 when he died in 1966, leaving behind him an irreplaceable image of the Paris-based artistic and political rebellion - a flat where the rooms were filled with a complicated collection ranging from masterpieces to American Indian masks, waffle toasters and bits of driftwood and shells.

This is now being auctioned, including 400 works by Miró, Ernst, Magritte, Picabia and other painters, 3,500 first edition books signed by every leading contemporary writer, most of the movement's extensive archives, hundreds of letters and drawers containing 15,000 Man Ray photographs.

Philosopher Jacques Derrida, who has helped to organise a street protest when the auction opens next week, said that if the state did not intervene to buy the treasures the sale would mark the end of a unique adventure inspired by 'a mosaic of forms and aesthetic emotions - the symbol of still-living surrealist thought'.

'This was more than a writer's home,' he added. 'It was a space made up of creation and desire, the witness of a new form of thought being generated, experimentation which Breton himself called art magique. When you went into the flat, you discovered both the secret of a life and a movement of thought.'

The movement, often torn by a love-hate relationship with Marxism, set out to establish 'new values inspired by dreams, instinct, desires and revolt', but Breton's personal representation of the rebellion has been reduced to a purely material auctioneers' estimate of at least £20 million.

Only one wall has been preserved for permanent exhibition at the Pompidou Centre.

The flat itself, which could only be visited by two or three people at a time because it was so crowded when Breton died, also contained memories of fabulous meetings attended by celebrities, a unique point of contact where Salvador Dalí rubbed shoulders with the poet Louis Aragon or the film director Luis Buñuel before they adjourned to Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Writer Fernando Arrabal, who attended debates in the flat, compared the dispersal of Breton's collection to nineteenth-century attempts by Spain's Prado museum to get rid of El Greco's paintings because they were considered 'absurd caricatures'. A thousand artists, writers and librarians had signed petitions to save 42, Rue de Fontaine, but had been outraged by what Arrabal described as a 'succession of lies and laughable propositions' during talks with Ministers and government officials.

Sale of the flat's contents were precipitated by the death two years ago of Breton's widow, Elisa, and the demand for death duties from his daughter, Aube.