Dada or Dadaism [French, from
dada, child's word for a horse] Nihilistic movement in the arts that
flourished chiefly in France, Switzerland, and Germany
from about 1916 to about 1920 [and later -ed.] and that was based on the
principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy,and
cynicism and the rejection of laws of beauty and social organization.
The most widely accepted account of the movement's naming concerns a meeting
held in 1916 at Hugo Ball's Cabaret (Café) Voltaire in Zürich,
during which a paper knife inserted into a French-German dictionary pointed to
the word dada; this word was seized upon by the group as appropriate for
their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities,
which were engendered by disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War
I. After 1922, however, Dada faded and many Dadaists grew interested in
surrealism.
A few DADA ARTISTS included: Breton, André Duchamp, Marcel Ernst,
Max Hausmann,Raoul Heartfield, John Picabia, Francis
(Leianne Henry)
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Dada
Painting Examples |