Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) is best known as the cofounder of the Dada movement and author of many of its most influential poems and manifestos. Born in Romania, Tzara moved to Zurich, Switzerland, in 1915, where Dada flourished at the Cabaret Voltaire. In 1919, he brought Dada to Paris, France, where, with a few interruptions, he lived for the rest of his life. After the peak of the Dada era, Tzara wrote his epic Approximate Man and Other Writings (Editions Fourcade, 1931), and joined the surrealists for several years. In the 1930s, he worked organizing writers in support of the anti-fascist cause in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, Tzara stayed in France and participated in the Résistance. From 1919 until his death in 1963, he published more than fifty books in French. Though his epitaph is simply “poète,” he also wrote and worked as a journalist, playwright, art critic and collector, historian, literary critic, and human rights advocate.