letterist

Letterist is the name given to an avant‑garde movement that emerged in France in the early 1930s. The movement was founded by Pierre Klossowski and Pierre Mabille after their split from the Surrealist group. Their aim was to develop a theory and practice of letter and sign analysis that would extend beyond traditional aesthetic concerns.

The core of Letterist theory is that letter, text and sequence can be used as a laboratory for form, value and meaning. Through systematic examination and reorganization of orthography, phonetics and typographic symbols, the Letterists sought to generate new associations and encode social critique. Their network of small newsletters, pamphlets and flyers circulated titled *Le Mail* and *Travaux*, challenging both literary conventions and industrial production.

The movement splintered in 1935 when one of its main members, André Breton, labeled the Letterists as "dissidents" and removed them from the Surrealist collective. While the Letterists dissolved by the late 1930s, their emphasis on textuality and critique of commodification influenced later groups, notably the Situationist International of the 1960s. Early Letterist archives are housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and continue to be a subject of scholarly research on the relationship between writing, language games and avant‑garde art.