The Dada Movement - Berlin, Cologne, Hanover,
The Hague

Berlin

Erste Internationale Dada Messe (First International Dada Fair) - 1920

The Dada movement, formed in Zurich 1916, was a reaction to World War I, its anarchic iconoclasm appealing to the artists George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst and John Heartfield who organized the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920. Also a reaction to the horrors of the war was the Neue Sachlichkeit/New Objectivity movement, which expressed the bitter social criticism of George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix.

The Berlin movement's originality stemmed from its political militantism: it was involved in the social upheavals and the Spartakist revolution which broke out at the end of the war in the German capital. Its plastic works, ferociously subversive, retain for us the cruel image of the twilight of the bourgeoisie.

---

Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann: Dada siegt!

Raoul Hausmann: Tête mécanique 1919-1920. Berlin

Raoul Hausmann was born in Vienna (1886). He spent his early years in Berlin where he met with Johannes Baader and who joined him and Richard Huelsenbeck in founding Dada Club in 1918. During this period of intense activity he contributed to the review Die Freie Strasse and to the Club Dada. He founded and ran, together with Joannes Baader and Richard Huelsenbeck Der Dada and organized the first Dada exhibition in Berlin. After the Dada movement, he undertook research in optophonetics, and at the beginning of the 1930s, photography became his preferred means of expression, with views of the Baltic Sea, the island of Sylt, and numerous nudes on the beach (Vera Broido). In 1933 he took refuge in Ibiza. There he developed research, not so far from that of ethnography, on the traditional settlement. From 1937-38, he lived in Czechoslovakia, where he began more research on photography. During the war he lived in a little village in France, near Limoges. After the war he moved to Limoges and, thanks to a parcel of photographic paper sent by Moholoy-Nagy, he made his first photograms. Then he returned to work in photography, photomontage, and sound poetry. From 1959 to 1964 painting became one of the most important aspects of his artistic production, which he later transformed into pictographic writing. Hausmann died in Limoges in 1971.

Richter and Huelsenbeck were responsible for bringing the Dada virus to Berlin where it found a highly favourable culture medium in the little libertarian group formed by Raoul Hausmann, Franz Jung, Johannes Baader, George Grosz, John Heartfield and a dozen young intellectuals more or less recently graduated from Herwarth Walden's Sturm.

See the article By Michael Glover "Great Works: The Art Critic 1919-20 (31.8x25.4 cms)"
in The Independent.

Hausmann, a founding member of the Berlin Dada group, developed photomontage as a tool of satire and political protest. Although the 'art critic' is identified by a stamp as George Grosz, another member of the group, the image was probably an anonymous figure cut from a magazine. The fragment of a German banknote behind the critic's neck suggests that he is controlled by capitalist forces. The words in the background are part of a poem poster made by Hausmann to be pasted on the walls of Berlin.

---

Phonetic poem. Raoul Hausmann - 1918

---

Raoul Hausmann: Dada Cino - 1920

---

ABCD. Photograph (self-portrait) of Hausmann from the 1920's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch at the opening of the First International Dada Fair held at the Otto Burchard Gallery, Berlin, June 30, 1920.
Photo by Robert Sennecke

---

Raoul Hausmann - Phonemes.wmv

---

Richard Huelsenbeck

From the First German Dada Manifesto of 1918:

"Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week... The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."

Otto Dix

The 1919 oil-and-collage-on-board work The Electric Tram by Otto Dix was one of few lots to sell far above its estimate at a Sotheby's auction in February 2012. Valued at 700,000 pounds to 1 million pounds, this Dada-influenced evocation of urban life was also making its debut at auction, this time from a German collection. It was bought by a telephone buyer for 3 million pounds.

---

George Grosz

George Grosz: Man of Opinion

---

Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch was one of the few women artists to participate in the anti-art Dada movement of the early twentieth century. As a printmaker, painter, collagist, and photomontagist, Höch was part of the intellectual renaissance of Weimar Berlin as well as the Berlin Dadaist circle. Her artwork documented the political and social turmoil caused by World War I, as well as the newfound gender issues associated with women earning the right to vote, becoming more financially independent, and acquiring sexual liberation.

Anna Therese Johanne Höch was born in Gotha, Germany, in 1889. She studied graphic arts at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin from 1912 to 1914 until she was recruited to work for the Red Cross during the war. Höch also trained in fabric design and textiles after her time spent in the war, working part time for Ullstein Verlag, Weimar Berlin's largest publishing empire. She created lace tablecloths and needlepoint patterning and most notably had access to the company's catalogues which she used to create her early photomontages. In 1915, Höch met Raoul Hausmann and through him became associated with the Berlin Dadaists. Hausmann and Höch, under the influence of Dadaism, perfected the art of photomontage and used it as satirical propaganda. Höch became the only female to show works at the First International Dada Fair in 1920.

In 1922, Höch ended her relationship with Hausmann and left the Berlin Dadaists. Known for her independent spirit, masculine dress, and bisexual tendencies, Höch then had a relationship with Til Brugman, the Dutch writer and linguist from 1926 to 1929. She continued to produce her own art and champion female rights until the onset of World War II when the Nazi regime banned all artistic movements, claiming them to be "degenerate." Instead of fleeing Berlin, Höch chose inner exile so she could protect her precious artwork and Dada memorabilia. After the war, Höch quietly remained in Berlin and focused on smaller works. She died in 1978 at the age of eighty-nine. The Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective of her work in 1997 to commemorate her contribution to Dada and women's art as a whole. NMWA's collection includes eighteen objects created by Höch.

by Ali Printz
Currently an intern in the Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Hannah Höch: Cut With the Kitchen Knife

Hannah Höch: DaDandy - 1919

Hannah Höch: And When You Think the Moon is Setting - 1921

The Quiet Girl with a Big Voice - Hannah Hoch

---

John Heartfield

In 1918, Heartfield made a decision that would ultimately impact the rest of his career. He became a member of the Berlin Club Dada as a protest to Germany's current barbaric state and also joined the German Communist Party.

In 1919, after co-editing Jedermann sein eigner Fussball that was banned after its first edition, Heartfield joined his brother Wieland and George Grosz to found Die Pleite, a satirical, political magazine.

Continuing his activity in the Dada club, in 1920, he helped organize the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (First International Dada Fair) in Berlin.

Jedermann sein eigner Fussball - February 1919

---

Cologne

In Cologne, Dada was the result of a local group's meeting with Hans Arp, messenger of the Zurich movement. The local base got organized right after the end of the war around Max Ernst, who had been previously drawn to Chirico's "metaphysical" painting, and around a communist activist, Johannes Theodor Baargeld.

Under the influence of the Arp-Baargeld-Ernst trio, Cologne became the scene of tremendous activity. For a while the city even turned into the capital of collage, especially of collaborative assemblages like the Fatagaga ("Fabrication de tableaux garantis gazométriques"), mass produced by the "Centrale W/3".

---

---

Hanover

Kurt Schwitters

---