8. Dada-Soirée. Mittwoch, d. 9. April 1919. Saal zur Kaufleuten.
Zürich: 1919. Handbill program. On the verso advertisements for the Dada 4–5, and a monthly edited publication by Walter Serner “Das Hirngeschwür”, and also earlier publications of the movement the “Collection Dada”. 1 leaf, 2 printed pages. 280 × 200 mm. Formerly folded, overall in fine condition.
Handbill with the program of the 8th Dada Soirée, the last official event of the Dadaists in Switzerland.
The program was divided into three acts, the first – printed under the rubric “Mouvement Dada. Manifeste, Vorträge, Kompositionen, Tänze, Simultanische Dichtungen” – was recitations and performances by Viking Eggeling, Käthe Wulff (reading Huelsenbeck and Kandinsky) Tristan Tzara (“La fièvre du mâle,” and other selected poems). The performers of the second part were Hans Richter, Hans Heusser, Hans Arp (“Wolkenpumpe”), Susanne Perrotet (with compositions by Arnold Schönberg) and Walter Serner (manifesto and selected poems). The third part started with a dance performance by Käthe Wulff, the “Noir Cacadou” and continued with Serner’s and Tzara’s recitations and the musical performace of Heusser.
“The climax of Dada activity in Zürich, and of Dada as such, was the grand soirée in the Saal zur Kaufleuten on 9th April 1919.” (Hans Richter).
“April: Serner and Tzara fill the Kaufleuten Hall to capacity for the eighth and final Dada Soirée, bringing Zürich Dada into the realm of big-time entertainment. The first pieces, writes one M. Ch. for the daily ‘Berliner Börsen-Courier’ (17 April), meet with ‘ironic exultation,’ particularly a simultaneous poem for twenty people conducted by Tzara. Then Serner reads, ‘in a cutting voice,’ his manifesto ‘Letzte Lockerung’ (Final Dissolution), and a scandal breaks out such as old-time Zürichers have never seen. Serner reads calmly while the public hurls orange peels, coins and insults; cigarettes and more coins greet Tzara’s new Dada proclamation, drowned out within seconds. ‘Messrs. the Dadaists, who were never more unnecessary than presently, should confine their manifestos to their numerous magazines… and not burden the public with them.’ The review is accurate in most respects — but its author is really Serner himself, winking at the scandalmongering press.” (Matthew S. Witkovsky, in: Dada. Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris. Washington, 2005.)
[Dada in Zürich 132.; Almanacco Dada p. 600 (illus.); Motherwell-Karpel 56, illus. p. 332.; Verkauf p. 144 (illus.); Richter p. 77ff. (illus.); Tendenzen 3/66.; Düsseldorf 133.; Pompidou: Dada 1448, illus. p. 1003.; Washington: Dada p. 437f.]
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Price: €8,000.00