(Romanian language only)

Cartier Editors, Romania and Moldova 2009, 96 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-9975-79-544-9. Price: RON 28 (approx £7). For orders and other enquiries, please write to cartier@cartier.md .

Avant-garde and contemporary art are especially interesting when they meet. Such meetings took place before, as in the ‘Dada East’ project, in which Marcel Janco, Arthur Segal and Tristan Tzara met, among others, Harun Farocki, Dan Perjovschi and Lia Perjovschi. This time, artist Dan Perjovschi meets Romanian absurdist Urmuz.

The writings of Urmuz (pen name of Demetru Demetrescu-Buzau), although first published in 1922 (with the author dying in 1923, aged only 40), had a great influence over the Romanian avant-garde literature of the 1920s and 30s. His style prefigures Ionesco’s ‘tragedy of the language’ and his literary inventions are of the highest Dadaist calibre, although apparently he never heard of Dada.

Dan Perjovschi is one of the best-known Romanian contemporary artists. His cartoon-like drawings, disarmingly immediate and politically resonant, responding to local and national issues, have appeared in a range of formats: from his notebooks, to newspapers and galleries around the world. More details on www.perjovschi.ro .