Today in labor history April 28, 1896: Tristan Tzara was born. He was a Romanian-French poet, journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, film director. He co-founded the anti-establishment Dada movement. During Hitler’s rise to power, he participated in the anti-fascist movement and the French Communist Party. In 1934, Tzara organized a mock trial of Salvador Dalí because of his fawning over Hitler and Franco. The surrealists Andre Breton, Paul Éluard and René Crevel helped run the trial. In the 1940s, Tzara lived in Marseilles with a large group of anti-fascist artists and writers, under the protection of American diplomat Varian Fry. These included Victor Serge, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Andre Breton and Max Ernst. Later he joined the French Resistance, writing propaganda and running their pirate radio station. After the Liberation of Paris, he wrote for L'Éternelle Revue, a communist newspaper edited by Jean-Paul Sartre. Other contributors to the newspaper included Louis Aragon, Éluard, Jacques Prévert and Pablo Picasso. Varian Fry, and his communal home for radicals in hiding, was portrayed in the historical drama series “Transatlantic.”
Book Release & Artist Conversation!
Avy Jetter (Box of Bones), @tylerzonia [me] (Feather), Ajuan Mance (Gender Studies)
Saturday, April 13, 6-9pm
Silver Sprocket, 1018 Valencia, #sanfrancisco
Join us as we talk creative process, #gender#horror#surrealism & more. #Comics readings & book releases!
Today in Labor History April 1, 1976: Surrealist artist, Max Ernst, died. In addition to his artwork, he was an anti-Fascist, who was literally chased out of France by the Gestapo. He opposed Stalin’s Moscow trials. And much of his art had anti-Fascist and anti-Stalinist themes. He produced his painting “Fireside Angel” (or “Angel of the Hearth and Home”) after the Spanish Republicans were defeated by the Fascists. Ernst said, “Now this was naturally an ironic title for a sort of ungainly beast that tramples down and destroys everything in its path. It was the impression I had at the time of what was likely to happen in the world, and I was right.”
Today in Labor History March 2, 1974: Salvador Puig Antich was executed by garrote in Barcelona, Spain. He was a militant anarchist and Catalan independence fighter who fought against the Spanish state with the terrorist group Iberian Liberation Movement in the early 1970s. He was convicted of bank robbery and killing a police officer. His arrest and execution became a cause célèbre in Francoist Spain for Catalan autonomists, pro-independence supporters, and anarchists. He was also the last person executed by the fascist Franco regime. His execution inspired new artistic works by Catalan artists Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies.
Today in Labor History February 4, 1900: Jacques Prévert was born (1900-1977). Prevert was a poet, surrealist and libertarian socialist who glorified the spirit of rebellion & revolt.
Excerpt from “Song in the Blood”
There are great puddles of blood on the world
Where’s it going all this spilled blood
Murder’s blood. . . war’s blood. . .
Misery’s blood. . .
And the blood of men tortured in prisons. . .
The blood of children calmly tortured by their papa
And their mama. . .
And the blood of men whose heads bleed in
Padded cells
And the roofer’s blood
When the roofer slips and falls from the roof