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…
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Dadaism in Film
Members of the Dada cultural and artistic movement began to experiment with film as a means to disseminate their stylistic partialities and cultural values through…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Richter, Hans (1888–1976)
Hans Richter was a German painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker associated with a number of the European avant-garde movements, most notably Dadaism. After 1940…
Film Subject Overview
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
Montage
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Futurism
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Bauhaus
In 1919 a young architect named Walter Gropius initiated one of the most modern art schools of the twentieth century in the city of Weimar…
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism was a movement initiated by a group of loosely affiliated artists that came together during the early 1940s, primarily in New York City.…
Modernism in Europe
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…
Cubism [REVISED AND EXPANDED]
Cubism is an art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century. It was a key movement in the birth…
Hausmann, Raoul (1886–1971)
Raoul Hausmann, the “Dadasoph,” was an active participant in the Dada movement in Berlin, authoring key manifestos, co-founding Club Dada, editing journals, and co-organizing the…
Automatism
Both Dada and Surrealist writers and artists experimented with “automatic” creative production. Dadaists including Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Kurt Schwitters wrote “automatic”…
Wood, Beatrice (1893–1998)
An American potter known for luster-glaze chalices and whimsical ceramic figures, Beatrice Wood was once named the “Mama of Dada.” Born on 3 March 1893…
Arp, Hans/Jean (1886–1966)
Hans/Jean Arp is an Alsatian poet and artist, who was a founding member of Dada and an active participant in Constructivism and Surrealism. Arp grew…
Automatism [REVISED AND EXPANDED]
There were different directions and forms connnected to Dada but an important element within it was a position of critique of established art and society.…
Taeuber, Sophie (1889–1943)
Artist Sophie Taeuber’s career spanned a variety of movements, including Dada and Constructivism, and media, such as textile arts, interior design, architecture, painting, and sculpture.…
Cabaret Voltaire
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…
Aragon, Louis (1897–1982)
French author Louis Aragon was a member of the surrealist movement until he split with André Breton and began to devote more of his energy…
Loy, Mina (1882–1966)
Mina Loy, born Mina Gertrude Lowry, (1882–1966), was a British artist, designer, model, novelist, nurse, playwright and poet, with ties to the Dadaist, Futurist and…
Grosz, George (1893–1959)
George Grosz was a leading artist of Germany’s early 20th-century expressionist, Dada, and New Objectivity movements. His works from this period remain celebrated examples of…
Dix, Otto (1891–1969)
Otto Dix was a painter who emerged as a leading figure of the German avant-garde after World War I. His expressionist caprices, dadaist collages, and…
Schwitters, Kurt (1887–1948)
Kurt Schwitters is most commonly associated with Dada, but his relationship to that movement’s aesthetic, political, and philosophical rebellion was ambivalent. Although he was friends…