Tristan tzara band

Moinesti, Romania, 1896–Paris, 1963

Tristan Tzara’s importance for the history of modern art is split equally between his creative output as a poet, playwright, and performer and his activities as a publisher, manifesto writer, and organizer. As a collector, he acquired large holdings of photographs, drawings, and collages by an international group of artists, often as gifts or exchanges.

Born Samuel Rosenstock, Tzara spent the First World War in neutral Switzerland, where he founded the Zurich Dada movement in 1916. During this time, he invented an eccentric persona for himself as a monocled impresario of the international avant-garde. In Zurich, Tzara organized soirées of “artistic entertainments” at the Cabaret Voltaire with fellow Dadaists—including Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Marcel Janco, and Sophie Taeuber—where prints by Pablo Picasso shared wall space with fantastical masks, and vaudeville songs were performed alongside rigorous modern compositions by Arnold Schoenberg. Tzara built an international network of avant-garde artists, who were connec

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