Arthur Cravan

Arthur Cravan (born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd on 22 May 1887, Lausanne, Switzerland) was known as a pugilist, a poet, a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements. He was the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. His brother Otho Lloyd was a painter and photographer married to the Russian émigré artist Olga Sacharoff. His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to Irish poet Oscar Wilde. He changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée Renée Bouchet, who was born in the small village of Cravans in the department of Charente-Maritime in western France.

Cravan was last seen at Salina Cruz, Mexico in 1918 and most likely drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in November 1918.

Cravan was born and educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, then at an English military academy from which he was expelled after spanking a teacher. After his schooling, during World War I, he travelled throughout Europe and America using a variety of passports and documents, some of them forged. He declared no single nationality and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries".

Cravan set out to promote himself as an eccentric and an art critic, though his interest was showing off a powerful, striking personal style rather than discussing art. He staged public spectacles and stunts with himself at the centre, once acting on the front of a line of carts where he paraded his skills as a boxer and singer. Later in life he would box the legendary Jack Johnson. Cravan was very skilled at looking for the striking and shocking, which had its roots in the contemporary cult of the young man of action (athletes, soldiers, flamboyant artists) but strongly prefigured Dadaism. The lasting legacy of Arthur Cravan is the modern medium of conceptual art, which Marcel Duchamp carried into art history.

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