Overview
Dada, or Dadaism, was a radical avant-garde art and literary movement that exploded onto the scene during the cataclysm of World War I. Born in Zürich in 1916, it quickly metastasized across Europe and beyond, including Berlin, Paris, and New York City. Disgusted by the senseless slaughter and the perceived irrationality of a world that could plunge into such conflict, Dadaists rejected logic, reason, and bourgeois aesthetic values. Their aim was not to create beauty, but to provoke, to shock, and to dismantle the very foundations of art and society that they believed had led to the war. Through nonsensical poetry, collage, sound poems, and provocative performances, Dada sought to expose the absurdity of existence and forge a new language of resistance.