André Masson, born on 4 January 1896 in Balagny-sur-Thérain and died on 28 October 1987 in Paris, was a French painter, engraver, illustrator and decorator.   

He participated in the Surrealist movement during the 1920s and retained its spirit until 1945. On the fringe, he also worked as a sculptor. 

Famous for his "automatic drawings" and "sand paintings", he is marked on an aesthetic level by "the spirit of metamorphosis" and "mythical invention" and even more so, on an aesthetic level, by a visceral anti-conformism, including within the Surrealist group, from which he distanced himself as soon as he entered it, appearing as the "rebel of Surrealism". 

Having narrowly escaped death during the First World War and being sensitive to the writings of Sade and his friend Georges Bataille, his work can be interpreted as an uncompromising questioning of human barbarism and perverse behaviour. This concern takes precedence over any aesthetic consideration. Critics explain the marginal role he plays in modern art by the fact that "he has never been concerned with pleasing".

His influence was most noticeable in New York during the Second World War, where he was staying while fleeing Nazi Germany. His paintings broke with the classical pattern of figures standing out against a background (to best symbolise the state of mental confusion that he believed governed his century), serving as references to the painters Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky, the founders of abstract expressionism.