Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Lynching dramas reflect the brutal history of racial violence in which black individuals, primarily black men, were murdered by a white mob with no repercussions…
Sam Stephenson was a controversial Irish architect whose work throughout the 1970s and 1980s sparked debates about brutalist architecture and planning regulations. His best-known works…
Ménilmontant is a 38-minute black and white avant-garde French film directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff. Its narrative develops solely through images and montage, without the support…
Jean Painlevé was a French scientist who was particularly well known for his documentary films about science and the natural world. He was the only…
Though it originates in the work of H. D., hermeticism achieves its most lasting impact and enduring legacy in the work of mid-century Italian poets.…
Apocalypse Now, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) that deals with European colonialism…
Born Fabian Avernius Lloyd in Lausanne, Switzerland to expatriate English parents, Arthur Cravan was a self-styled ‘poet-pugilist,’ nephew of Oscar Wilde, and husband of British…
Known as Il Duce (the Leader), the son of a Marxist blacksmith, Benito Mussolini was the ruler of Fascist Italy (1922–43). A master of populist…
Born in Malaga, it was in Barcelona that Picasso first identified himself as a subversive Modernist with a critical, contestatory and transgressive praxis exposing the…
Alexander Kluge is a German author, film director, and television producer who has also worked as a lawyer, teacher, and political lobbyist. A founding figure of…
When the architect Sérgio Ferro entitled his 1967 manifesto ‘New Architecture’, he proclaimed a new architecture in Brazil by means of alignment with the thesis-manifesto…
Andrezj Wajda is a Polish film and theater director, best known for his politically engaged films exploring Polish history, and his collaboration with the actor…
The Chinese Revolution of 1911, also known as the Xinhai Revolution (辛亥革命, Xinhai Geming), ended China’s centuries-old traditions of Imperialism and Feudalism, and led to…
Adolf Hitler was the dominant political figure in German Nazism. He became chairman of the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or…
British painter Francis Bacon was one of the most important figures of international post-war modernism. During the 1940s and 1950s, he developed a characteristic painting…
Based on the quality of design in his projects both built and unbuilt, the significant output of work during his relatively short career in Cuba…
The Cabaret Voltaire, housed within the Holländische Meierei bar at Spiegelgasse 1, in Zürich’s Niederdorf district, was the original breeding ground for the Zürich Dada…
Also known as ‘Red Rosa’, Rosa Luxemburg was a writer, philosopher, feminist, and labour activist who fuelled the socialist movement in Weimar Germany. For modernists…
Nissim Aloni is an Israeli playwright and short-story writer. Aloni, who was born in Tel Aviv, was the first playwright to break away from the…
New Verse was a British literary magazine founded by Hugh Ross Williamson (1901–1978) and Geoffrey Grigson (1905–1985). Essentially Grigson’s hobbyhorse, this little magazine would become…
Mohamed Choukri (Muḥammad Shukrī) was a Moroccan writer who made an important contribution to the renewal of literature in the Arabic world. Internationally, he is…
Joseph Stalin (Iusif Vassarionovich Dzhugashvili) was born in Gori, Russian Empire, which is part of present-day Georgia. He adopted the name ‘Stalin’ from the Russian…