The Dada Movement - Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, Holland

Germany Dada: An Alphabet of German Dadaism

Parts 1 & 2 - 1969

Helmut Herbst - Director, Cinematographer, Screenwriter

This superb documentary concerns the contributions of German artists to the Dada movement. Created in 1916, the organizers rejected previous convention and delighted in nihilistic satire in painting, sculpture and literature. Comparisons are made between the movement and the political and social upheaval at the time of the release of this feature (1969).

Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

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

Berlin

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.

Dada in Berlin

Raoul Hausmann 1886 - 1971

Raoul Hausmann on tumblr.com

A complete source -- scads of links, photos and articles about Hausmann, with many repetitions.

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Raoul Hausmann biography on WikiArtis

Raoul Hausmann: Dada siegt!

Raoul Hausmann: Tête mécanique 1919-1920.

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

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Raoul Hausmann - Phonemes.wmv

Raoul Hausmann: Elasticum, 1920, collage and gouache
Courtesy of the Galerie Berinson, Berlin

See Cut & Paste, a history of photomontage for articles and illustrations about Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and Kurt Schwitters.

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Richard Huelsenbeck 1892 - 1974

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."

The Electric Tram

Biography on The Online Otto Dix Project

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.

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George Grosz 1893 - 1959

George Grosz biography on WikiArtis

George Grosz: Man of Opinion

George Grosz: Monteur John Heartfield (1920)

George Grosz: Der Blutige Ernst

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Hannah Höch 1889 - 1978

Hannah Hoch and the Dada Montage - Before Digital

Hannah Hoch (born Anna Therese Johanne Hoch on November 1, 1899) remains a well-known member of the Berlin Dada movement, and was among the first prominent artists to work with photo-montage techniques. Hoch attended the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin from 1912 to 1914, during the tense lead-up to the first World War.

Hoch later described the war as having shattered her view of the world and affording her a newly political consciousness. Hoch initially became involved with Dada around 1919, as a result of her relationship with fellow Dadaist Raoul Hausmann. It was through Hausmann that Hoch was introduced to several other influential artists of the Dada movement, among them Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, and Piet Mondrian. Hoch's work, while mostly in keeping with the general Dadaist aesthetic, skillfully added a wryly feminist note to the movement's philosophy of disgust with the perceived wrongs of society.

The Dadaists insisted that the valuing of "logic" among modern cultures had led to an over-valuing of conformity, classism, and nationalism which in turn provided a suitable environment for the horrors of World War I. Dadaists therefore rejected this devotion to reason in favor of chaos, nonsense, and irrationality. Through her art, Hoch quietly submitted female equality to the list of anti-bourgeois and radically leftist sentiments which Dada espoused.

Unfortunately Hoch remained alone in her attempts to convey this message, and remained the only female Berlin Dadaist, never fully accepted by the rest of the group. Hans Richter patronizingly dismissed her contribution to the movement by calling it merely "the sandwiches, beer and coffee she managed somehow to conjure up despite the shortage of money," failing to note that Hoch was among the few members of her immediate artistic circle with a reliable income. She herself wrote:

"None of these men were satisfied with just an ordinary woman. But neither were they included to abandon the (conventional) male/masculine morality toward the woman. Enlightened by Freud, in protest against the older generation... they all desired this "New Woman" and her groundbreaking will to freedom. But—they more or less brutally rejected the notion that they, too, had to adopt new attitudes...This led to these truly Strinbergian dramas that typified the private lives of these men."

by Meghan Maloney - April 29, 2013

more

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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: DaDa Dolls - 1916

Hannah Höch: DaDandy - 1919

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

The Quiet Girl with a Big Voice - Hannah Hoch

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John Heartfield 1891 - 1968

John Heartfield biography on WikiArtis

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

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Cologne

Soon after the declaration of war, as Arp was taking refuge in Switzerland, Max Ernst went into combat in the German artillery. Discharged in the beginning of 1919, he returned to his native Westphalia, where Arp was to join him a few months later, fortified by his Dadaist experience in Zurich.

Meanwhile, in Cologne, Ernst had met Alfred Grünwald, son of a corporate managing director, founder of the Rhine branch of the Communist Party, and with a reputation under the pseudonym Johannes Theodor Baargeld, as a poet and painter.

Like the Berlin Dadaists, the two men took part in the revolutionary movement of 1918-1919. They published a Communist periodical, Der Ventilator (impossible to find today, but recently reprinted), some issues of which sold up to twenty thousand copies on the street and at factory and barrack gates, and which would ultimately be banned by the occupying British forces in 1919. [...]

Thanks to the shared intellectual resources of Ernst, Arp and Baargeld, Dada was to see some of its finest accomplishments in Cologne in collage. [...]

But of all the experiments tried out in Cologne, the one that remains, historically, the most important was the fusion of these distinct talents into a series of anonymous works facetiously named Fatagaga ("Fabrication of tableaux guaranteed to be gasometric"). By creating in this way a company producing collective collages made with or without prior agreement, the three men inaugurated a technique that the surrealists would fruitfully develop (as the "exquisite corpse"). This company was called Centrale W/3 ("W für Weststupidien, 3 für die 3 Verschworenen (conspirators): Hans Arp, J. T. Baargeld und M.[ax] E.[rnst]"); its mouthpiece was the eponymous magazine Dada W/3, which also did not survive its infancy.

Excerpt from Michel SANOUILLET, Dada in Paris.

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Johannes Theodor Baargeld 1892 - 1927

(Alfred Emanuel Ferdinand Grünwald)

Biography and some works of 1920 in The Museum of Modern Art

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Hanover

Kurt Schwitters 1887 - 1948

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Holland

Theo van Doesburg (Christian Emil Marie Küpper) 1883 -1931

Theo van Doesburg in 1915

Biography at the MoMA

Biography on Wikipedia

Poster of the Kleine Dadasoirée 1922

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Paul Citroen 1896 - 1983

Paul Citroen - Self-portrait - 1914

Paul Citroen - Metropolis - 1923

Paul Citroen was born in Berlin, December 15, 1896. Dutch photographer, photomontagist and painter, active also in Germany. He belonged to the DADA group in Berlin and was a friend of George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield and Erwin Blumenfeld. From 1922 to 1925 he was associated with the Bauhaus in Weimar, producing during this period the photocollage Metropolis (1923; Leiden, Rijksuniv.), the single work for which he remains best known, and which has become a classic image of the 20th century city. His period at the Bauhaus clearly helped shape his photographic style, his photomontages in particular betraying the influence of both Dada and Constructivism. In 1927 he moved to the Netherlands, founding and then teaching at the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam (1933-7). From 1935 to 1940, and again from 1945 to 1960, he was professor of drawing and painting at the Academie voor Beeldenden Kunsten in The Hague. He continued to work as both a painter and photographer without ever recapturing the fame that he had enjoyed with his work of the 1920s. He died in Wassenaar, March 13, 1983.

Paul Citroen, Letter to Francis Picabia, Bibliothèque Doucet, Paris.