אילריה וורונקה

Ilarie Voronca (born Eduard Marcus) (1903-1946), avant-garde poet, born in Braila, Romania. After graduating from law school in Bucharest, he worked for various insurance companies and banks. He started his literary activity by publishing poems in the Sburătorul literar, Flacăra, Năzuința, and Contimporanul literary periodicals. These early poems were collected in his first volume Restriști (“Hard Times”, 1923) with illustrations by Victor Brauner. One year later, having discovered the Dadaism, he changed his style dramatically and turned into a major member of the avant-gardist literary and artistic movements in Romania. Along with Victor Brauner and Stephan Roll, he published the constructivist magazine 75HP in 1924. After 1927 he joined the surrealist movement.

In 1933 he immigrated to France settling in Paris. His works published in French include Poèmes parmi les hommes (1934) with a illustration by Marc Chagall, L'Apprenti fantôme (1938), Beauté de ce monde (1940), Arbre (1942). During the German occupation of France in WW II, he joined the French Resistance as a writer and fighter taking part in the battle to liberate the city of Rodez. He visited Romania last time in January 1946 and after his return to Paris he committed suicide. Much of his work was published posthumously. During his lifetime he published over thirty collections of poetry and other works, of them nineteen were published in France. Another ten books were published after his death in France and in Romania.