La Première Aventure Céleste de Mr Antipyrine

Postface by Henri Béhar, publisher of Tristan Tzara’s Œuvres complètes.

Cover and illustrations by Marcel Janco (six color illustrations and one in black on laid paper).

This queer-titled collection was Tzara’s first work, published in Zurich. Bursting with originality, this rare book (at last re-issued as a facsimile) grew out of the collaboration between Tristan Tzara, his friend Marcel Janco (whose engravings are reproduced in color) and the anarchist printer Julius Heuberger.

As Europe was stuck in the trenches, Clemenceau was called president of the Council, the Russian revolution handed over the power to Lenin, and Tzara entered into the arena. Disrupting received ideas and throwing into the world his First Dada Manifesto: “Dada stays in the context of European weaknesses, it’s still shit, but from now on we want to shit in varied colors, to ornament the zoological garden of the art with all the consulate flags do do bong hiho aho hiho aho.”