Romania Erects Monument To Dada Founder

BUCHAREST (Reuter) - Romanian officials Tuesday inaugurated a monument to honor the founder of the irreverent "Dada" art form, Tristan Tzara, in his hometown in the east of the country.

The Mediafax news agency said the concrete monument to Tzara, by German artist Ingo Glass, was 13 metres (44 feet) tall and 2.6 metres (8.5 feet) wide, and towers over the road leading to the small town of Moinesti.

Tzara, of Jewish origin, left Moinesti, where he was born 100 years ago, moved to Switzerland as a teenager and later to France. He acquired notoriety in a Zurich cafe, where he read his poetry and fraternised with other non-conformist painters.

Other celebrities of the time in the Swiss city included Irish author James Joyce and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Both feature alongside Tzara in Tom Stoppard's 1975 play "Travesties."

Dadaism displayed contempt for conventional art and sought to shock critics by encouraging the use of non-conformist and irrational ideas. Its major exponents included Frenchman Marcel Duchamp and U.S. artists Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.

The monument combines letters composing the word "Dada," coined by Tzara during World War One to describe his iconoclastic art form.

Reuters/Variety