Chronology of the European Avant Garde, 19001937 - British Library

1909
• Louis Blériot flies across the English Channel from Sangatte to
Dover.
• ‘Tragic Week’ in Barcelona: general strike leads to incendiarism.
• General Strike in Sweden.
AUSTRIA
• Premiere of Oskar Kokoschka’s play Mörder, Hoffnung der
Frauen (Murder, hope of women) in Vienna. In 1919 Paul
Hindemith will compose a one-act opera based on the play.
• Schoenberg Erwartung and 3 Pieces for piano Op. 11 the first
wholly atonal piece of music.
• Webern 5 movements for string quartet Op. 5
FRANCE
• Paris Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes perform Prince Igor at the
Châtelet.
• Apollinaire L’Enchanteur pourrissant (with woodcuts by André
Derain) published by Kahnweiler.
• André Gide establishes La Nouvelle Revue Française.
• The Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Boichuk founds his own studioschool
in Paris.
• Picasso’s landscapes at Horta de Ebro, regarded by Gertrude
Stein as the first Cubist paintings.
GERMANY
• Berlin: Kurt Hiller and Jakob van Hoddis found Der Neue Club as
a focus for new writing, and organise performances under the
name Neopathetisches Cabaret (the group splits the following
year).
• Alfred Kubin’s novel, Die andere Seite.
• Dresden: Premiere of Richard Strauss and Hugo von
Hofmannsthal’s Elektra.
• Munich: Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von
Werefkin and others found the Neue Künstlervereinigung, a group
for avant-garde artists, musicians and dancers.
GREAT BRITAIN
• Glasgow School of Art completed.
• Wells’ feminist text, Ann Veronica.
• 16 Jun Opening of the V&A Museum
• November Glasgow rep stages first Chekhov play seen in UK,
The Seagull.
ITALY
• Balla Lampada ad arco
• 20 Feb Marinetti’s Le Futurisme published in Le Figaro. Also
published, in Italian, in Poesia V, n.1-2, Febr-March. Later called
Fondazione e manifesto del Futurismo.
• 3 Apr Marinetti, Le roi Bombance staged in Paris in Le Théâtre
de l’ Œuvre.
• April Marinetti’s Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna! (published in
Poesia V, n.7-8-9).
SCANDINAVIA
• Swedish novelist Sema Lagerlöf awarded Nobel Prize for
Literature.
SPAIN
• Ramón Gómez de la Serna publishes Marinetti in issue 6 of
journal Prometeo.
HUNGARY
• Lajos Kassák walks from Budapest to Paris, begins to write free
verse.
• MIÉNK breaks up after its second exhibition. The group
“Keresők” (=Seekers) is formed. Members: painters Lajos Tihanyi,
Róbert Berény, Béla Czóbel, Dezső Czigány, Károly Kernstok,
Ödön Márffy, Dezső Orbán, Bertalan Pór. Their first exhibition
denotes the first appearance of a truly avant-garde movement in
Hungary.
POLAND
• Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto published in the Krakow journal
Swiat in October 1909.
ROMANIA
• Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto published in Romanian in Craiova
in a local newspaper, on the same date (20 February 1909) as in
the Parisian Le Figaro
UKRAINE
• Odessa First Salon organised by sculptor Vladimir Izdebsky and
former student of Odesa Art School Wassili Kandinsky. It is the
first major display of avant-garde art in the territory of the Russian
Empire (it includes 900 works by 150 artists, such as Henri
Matisse, André Derain, Natalia Goncharova, Aleksandra Exter,
Mikhail Larionov, and many others).