Dada

Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of the movement commenced circa 1914 in Zurich, Switzerland and had ended by 1922. It was seen by many of its protagonists as a way of remonstration against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many believed to be the root cause of the war, and also against the artistic and academic consistency in the arts and society that became aligned to the war. Conversely its opponents believed that Dada was not art, but in fact "anti-art”. They alleged that everything that art stood for was diametrically opposite to Dada. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to affront ones sensibilities. Years later of course it was to become an important movement whose progenitors are now ranked amongst the 20th century artistic elite. These included Hugo Ball, Jean Arp, Marcel Janco, George Grosz, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Max Ernst and many more.