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Gherasim Luca
(1913-1994) Surrealist poet and artist


Gherasim Luca
Born in Bucharest, the son of a Jewish tailor, he spoke Yiddish, Romanian, German and French. From 1938, he traveled frequently to Paris, where he was introduced to the Surrealist circles. World War II and the official antisemitism in Romania forced him into local exile. During the short pre-Communist period of Romanian independence, he founded a Surrealist artists group, together with Gellu Naum, Paul Paun, Virgil Teodorescu and Dolfi Trost.

His first publications, including poems in French followed. He was the inventor of cubomania and, with Dolfi Trost, the author of the statement "Dialetic of Dialectic" in 1945. Harassed in Romania and caught while trying to flee the country, the self-called étran-juif ("StranJew") finally left Romania in 1952, and moved to Paris through Israel.

There he worked among others with Jean Arp, Paul Celan, François Di Dio and Max Ernst, producing numerous collages, drawings, objects and text-installations. From 1967, his reading sessions took him to places like Stockholm, Oslo, Geneva, New York City and San Francisco. The 1988 TV-portrait by Raoul Sanglas Comment s'en sortir sans sortir made him famous for a larger readership.

In 1994, he was expelled from his apartment, officially for hygiene reasons. Luca, who had spent forty years in France without papers, could not cope. On February 9, at the age of 80, he committed suicide by jumping into the Seine.

"Gherasim Luca." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Oct 2008, 22:36 UTC. 6 Jan 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gherasim_Luca&oldid=247049665>

Downloads

Eloge de Malombra
Eloge de Malombra
Download as PDF (0.5MB)


Additional Material


Luca self portrait