Dada Baroness - it's her birthday!

Today is the birthday of the utterly fabulous and more than slightly bonkers Dada Baroness (1874-1927)  Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven. She has been largely written out of the history of the Dada movement by male chroniclers. She probably invented performance art in 2015-16 on the streets of New York. She was a painter, poet and creator of art objects. Her poetry has recently been published, her art is almost all lost.

Portrait of Elsa by Theresa Bernstein 1918

Elsa was friend/lover/collaborator of many more famous people in the dada period including Marcel Duchamp, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray and Djuna Barnes. She wasn't really a Baroness - a bigamous marriage to a dispossessed Baron lasted only a few months. She lived in poverty much of her adult life. There's a fuller account of Elsa below -

https://sugswritersblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-dada-baroness-elsa-von-freytag.html