Writer and Art Historian Marc Dachy dies at 62

 Paris  |  14 October 2015  |  AMA  |  Tweet  |  LinkedIn

Marc Dachy, passionate about Dadaism, has dedicated his whole life to the publication, translation and publishing of texts concerning key figures and relative unknowns of the Dadaism movement. Born in Anvers, Belgium in 1952, he died from cancer on 8 October 2015 in Paris.

His last work was published in spring 2015; entitled Il y a des journalistes partout. De quelques coupures de presse relatives à Tristan Tzara et André Breton (Gallimard, « L’Infini »), it explores the artist’s interest in Breton and his link to Dadaism. His role as editor led him to release the unedited version of Louis Aragon’s Projet d’histoire littéraire contemporaine from the Dada period, and, amongst others, some letters by the French painter Francis Picabia from 1988. He translated the Ivrea versions of texts by artists such as Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Piet Mondrian, La Monte Young and Kurt Schwitters. To the latter, he dedicated La cathédrale de la misère érotique, around the Merzbau movement that Schwitters founded. The author of many works, he also founded and furthered the review Luna Park in 1975, which ran for two series, the first published from 1975 to 1985. Eugène Ionesco awarded him the Prix des Créateurs in 1978 for this review. In 1990, he was recognized by the Grand Prix du Livre d’Art for his work Journal du mouvement Dada. 

His passion for Dadaism began when he was 18 years old, when he discovered the work of Clément Pansaers, the founder of the movement in his country who would end up joining the Dadaist community in Paris. He would publish his texts around fifteen years later.

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