A short life of the author
Tristan Tzara (born Samuel Rosenstock, 1896–1963) was a Romanian-born poet who cofounded the Dada movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916, becoming the most visible propagandist for the most destructive, joyful, and consequential art movement of the twentieth century. Alongside Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, and Richard Huelsenbeck, Tzara created Dada as a response to the insanity of the First World War — an art movement that was anti-art, anti-reason, anti-everything, including anti-Dada itself.
Life and Career
Born Samuel Rosenstock in Moinești, Romania, Tzara moved to Zurich as a young man to escape the war. At the Cabaret Voltaire, he organized performances that combined simultaneous poetry readings in multiple languages, African-influenced drumming, nonsense sounds, and audience confrontation. His manifestos — deliberately contradictory, anarchic, and funny — defined Dada’s method: “Dada means nothing” was both a philosophical statement and a provocation, a refusal to supply meaning to a culture that had used its rational traditions to produce industrial slaughter.
La Première Aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916) was his first major work, a performance text that mixed French, Romanian, and invented languages. Vingt-cinq poèmes (1918), with woodcuts by Hans Arp, demonstrated that Dada poetry could be lyrical even while being destructive. Tzara also pioneered chance-based composition methods, cutting up newspaper articles and rearranging the words at random — a technique that would resurface in William Burroughs’s cut-up experiments forty years later.
Sept manifestes Dada (1924) collected his manifestos into a single volume that remains the most important document of the movement. The “Dada Manifesto 1918” is the key text — a performance piece and philosophical declaration that attacks logic, morality, aesthetics, and every system of thought that claims authority over human experience.
After moving to Paris in 1920, Tzara became involved with André Breton’s nascent Surrealist movement but broke with Breton over the question of political direction — Tzara wanted continued anarchic freedom; Breton wanted organized revolution. The break was bitter and public.
His later poetry — L’Homme approximatif (Approximate Man, 1931) and Grains et Issues (1935) — evolved toward a more structured, though still experimental, style that engaged with politics and the social world. During the Second World War, Tzara joined the French Resistance and the Communist Party, a trajectory from nihilism to political commitment that mirrored the broader arc of the European avant-garde.
Key Works
- Vingt-cinq poèmes (1918)
- Sept manifestes Dada (1924)
- L’Homme approximatif (1931)
Collecting Tzara
Tzara’s early Zurich Dada publications are among the most valuable avant-garde collectibles in existence. Original issues of Dada magazine (1917–1921) can bring five-figure sums. Sept manifestes Dada (1924, Budry, Paris) first editions are scarce and bring $2,000–$8,000 depending on condition. Vingt-cinq poèmes (1918, with Arp woodcuts) is exceptionally rare. Later Paris editions and postwar reprints are more accessible. Signed copies exist but are uncommon on the market. Ephemera from Cabaret Voltaire performances — posters, programs, photographs — is museum-grade material.