Career
They had a daughter, Ximena. On 13 August 1943 during a boat trip off the coast of Massachusetts, Ximena drowned. After a suicide attempt, Elisa was joined in New York by a friend who came from Chile to support her.
On 9 or 10 December 1943, they went to a French restaurant on 56th Street in Manhattan.
Breton lived in the same street, and frequented this restaurant. He noticed Elisa, presented himself as a French writer and asked permission to exchange a few words with her.
The attraction was mutual:
In the summer of 1944, they travelled in the Gaspé Peninsula in the northeast of Canada. From September to October, Breton wrote Arcane 17, a poetic work combining declarations of love for Elisa with philosophical, historical and mythological considerations.
After the publication of the book, Breton dubbed the manuscript, "this book of high truancy." In August 1945, for practical reasons, André Breton and Elisa Bindorff married in Reno, Nevada.
On this occasion, they visited Hopi Indian reservations. They returned to France on May 25, 1946. In Paris, Elisa Breton participated in the surrealist journals Médium and Le Surréalisme même, at the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the gallery of Daniel Cordier (December 1959-January 1960) and at an exhibition dedicated to collages, drawings and prints at the Le Ranelagh gallery (1965).
In the shadow of the theorist of surrealism, she expressed her talent by making surrealist boxes.