The handwritten and typed manuscripts by Tristan Tzara from the collection of René Gaffé are gathered in a volume whose binding was designed by Paul Bonet. The manuscripts consist of drafts of writings from Le cinéma calendrier du cœur abstrait, maison, La deuxième aventure céleste de monsieur Antipyrine, De nos oiseaux, Faites vos jeux and poems from L'antitête. Tipped into the volume are also a card from Tzara to Paul Éluard and a notebook containing pen-and-ink drawings.

Romanian and French poet and artist, Tristan Tzara, was one of the founders of Dada. He was born Samuel Rosenstock into a Jewish family from Moinesti in Romania in 1896, and spoke Yiddish as his first language. He moved to Zürich in Switzerland during the First World War to study philosophy, a country which remained neutral throughout the war. There he met the German author and poet, Hugo Ball, and the two together with Emmy Hennings, Marcel Janco, Richard Hülsenbeck, Hans Richter, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp, initiated the Cabaret Voltaire, a literary and artistic café. It was during one of the soirees of the Cabaret Voltaire, which often featured the reading of nonsensical poems to a background of cacophanous noise, that Ball read the Dada Manifesto.The Belgian collector and industrialist René Gaffé was born in Brussels in 1887. He first worked as a journalist in the Netherlands, where he founded the daily newspaper L'écho belge, and then worked in the perfume industry, which was the source of his wealth. During the First World War, he began collecting African art and developed an interest in sculptures from the Belgian Congo. He later met Paul Éluard and André Breton who helped him build his art collection, which focused on Cubist and Surrealist art. He befriended Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and René Magritte who painted his portrait in 1942. Gaffé acquired works by them, along with paintings by Georges Braque, Giorgio de Chirico, and Fernand Léger. In 1956, he moved from Belgium to France, where he purchased a house in Cagnes-sur-Mer near Nice, large enough to exhibit his vast collection that included monumental works. That year, he also sold his library at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, a sale that featured the Tristan Tzara manuscripts acquired from Paul Éluard. Gaffé lived in Cagnes-sur-Mer with his second wife, Jeanne, until he passed away in 1968. Jeanne Gaffé arranged the sale of the art collection, which took place in 2001 at Christie's in Paris and in New York shortly after her death.

1 volume (21 items)

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