Cubomania: Gherasim Luca and Non-Oedipal Collage

For nearly all Anglophone audiences of surrealism, devotees and scholars alike, the voice of Gherasim Luca (1913-1994) remains to be discovered. As a member of the short-lived surrealist group active in Bucharest between 1940 and 1947 – one of the most fervid chapters in the story of the international movement but also one of its least known – and in post-war Paris, as a lone poet of incantations of the void and its negation, close to Andre Breton’s surrealist circle without being drawn into it, Luca’s status could be seen as that of a troubling, liminal figure. This is no more than he might have wished, yet among those who do know his work there are many who consider it to be some of the most original of its time.