Frédéric Louis Sauser was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a quaint city in the north of Switzerland. His family was bourgeois and his childhood quiet. Sauser left his homeland in 1904, at age 17, on a quest for his true path. Life took him to St .Petersburg, Russia, and then to New York, where he changed his name to Blaise Cendrars, a play on words. He wanted to burn—to create poetry from the ashes of his life. In 1913, Cendrars wrote The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France, an experimental travel poem that made waves in Paris. His career had begun. This exhibition presents his work as a poet, publisher, and firebrand. —Elena Clavarino