The avant-garde painter Kompowski, annoyed by the critics who come to see him in his workshop, goes to the café. The drunken servant, Kasperl, takes advantage of his absence to paint a canvas with a very bad view of Munich. Gallery owners who had come to acquire the master's works bought his paintings from him for a thousand marks. The crowd comes to cheer the artist. But the critic Schaikeles eventually learns the identity of the real creator of the painting. Anzenmaier and Burger, the gallery owners, come to claim their money when Kompowski returns home, and the fight becomes widespread. Kasperl puts an end to this by smashing the paintings over the heads of the gallery owners and knocking Gombrowski out with his easel.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Blümel Otto

Germany

Munich

Printed

Painting

Futurism

Modernity

Expressionism

Art criticism

Drunkenness

Beer

Mean trick

Celebrity

Satirical

Burlesque

Farcical

German

Painter

Kasperl

Reviewer

Crowd

Monologue

Versified passages

Caricature

Off-stage voice

Song

Misunderstanding

Parody of formal language

Chorus

Instrumental tune

Brawl

Dialect

Die Maler

The painters

The Roi and the Reine de Mars (King and Queen of Mars) wait for the arrival of a prodigious being, Matoum, but he is preceded by his doppelganger, the impostor Tévibar. While the poems told by Matoum bring light and colour to the planet, those delivered by Tévibar prompt melancholy and gloominess. During the sparring match between the two poets, Tévibar makes the Reine faint and the Roi die, but Matoum brings them back to life before flying to Earth to take part in the war.

Albert-Birot Pierre

France

Paris

Italy

Rome

Science fiction

Poetry

Mars Planet

Impostor

Vanguard

Seduction

Unwelcome seducer

Fainting

Miraculous cure

Resurrection

Ascension

Comical

Fantasy

Pierre Albert-Birot, Matoum et Tévibar, edition SIC, 1919 (cover)