Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Merse Pál Szeredi: Kassákism - MA in Vienna (1920-1925)

THE FUTURIST CONGRESS

In October 1924, Kassák made personal contact with many artists from the international avant-garde scene who were visiting Vienna for Friedrich Kiesler’s exhibition on avant-garde theatre techniques. A shrewd critic, Max Ermers, invited F. T. Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini, Theo van Doesburg, and Lajos Kassák to the lobby of the Hotel Erzherzog Karl for a “futurist congress", with the aim to provoke debate between the artists. As Kassák’s colleague József Nádass recalled, the clash between Kassák and Marinetti livened things up: “the debate turned into chair throwing, table slamming, and a fight almost broke out, because Marinetti was already flirting with fascism", while Kassák accused Mussolini of being a traitor.1 The constructivists criticised Marinetti for his pro-war stance and support for Italian fascist Futurism, on which Ermers noted that "Marinetti however saw no fundamental difference between dissimilar methods: according to him, the differences between the Italian futurists and the foreign constructivists led back to divergent racial temperaments".1 2 Following the argument - according to Ermers - Marinetti became very hungry and enquired after a good local restaurant. Since the ascetic constructivists could not invite him for such a meal, the congress quickly came to an end. The comic nature of the situation struck Theo van Doesburg, as he later wrote in a letter: "Marinetti burst the bubble of the Viennese mentality. Oh, Vienna is so dreary and backwards".3 [Fig. 35]

1 József Nádass, Kassák Lajossal az emigrációban [In exile with Lajos Kassák], Kortárs, 12/10., 1968,1629.

2 Max Ermers, Futuristenkongreß im Hotel Erzherzog Karl [Futurist congress in the Hotel Erzherzog Karl], Der Tag, 18 October 1924, 4.

3 Letter of Theo van Doesburg to Walter Dexel, Vienna, 11 November 1924. Published in Walter Vitt (ed.), Hommage o Dexel (1890-1973), Beiträge zum 90. Geburtstag des Künstlers [Hommage â Dexel (1890-1973), Essays to the 90th birthday of the artist], Keller, Starnberg, 1980,82-83.

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