Dadaism: Anti-Art, Nonsense, and the Movement That Rejected Everything (1916-1924)

On February 5, 1916, a group of artists gathered in a small bar in Zurich called the Cabaret Voltaire. Europe was tearing itself apart in the trenches of World War I. These artists had fled to neutral Switzerland from Germany, Romania, France, and elsewhere. They were disgusted by the war, disgusted by the civilization that had produced it, and disgusted by the art that civilization had produced. So they decided to make art that was not art. One of them, Hugo Ball, put on a costume made of cardboard tubes and recited a poem made of nonsense syllables: "gadji beri bimba glandridi lauli lonni cadori." The audience was confused, then amused, then hostile. That was the point. Dada had begun.

Dadaism is an art movement that rejected art. It emerged in Zurich in 1916 and spread to Berlin, Paris, New York, and other cities over the next eight years. Dada artists produced nonsense poetry, photomontage, collage, assemblage, performance, and objects that defied every convention of fine art. The most famous Dada object is Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt" and submitted to an exhibition as a work of art. Dada was not a style. It was an attitude, a refusal, a negation. It said: if this civilization produces war, then this civilization's art is worthless, and we will make art that is worthless too, but on purpose.

This entry covers what Dadaism is, how it emerged in wartime Zurich, which artists defined it, and how a movement built on rejection became one of the most influential forces in 20th-century art.

What Is Dadaism?

Dadaism is difficult to define because it was designed to resist definition. The name itself is a nonsense word. According to the most widely accepted account, the word "dada" was found by randomly stabbing a knife into a dictionary. It means "hobbyhorse" in French, "yes-yes" in Romanian, and nothing in particular in any other language. Tristan Tzara, one of the movement's founders, said: "Dada is nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing."

In practice, Dada produced several recognizable forms. The readymade, invented by Duchamp, is an ordinary manufactured object designated as art by the artist's choice. The photomontage, developed by the Berlin Dadaists, combines fragments of photographs and text to create political satire. The nonsense poem, performed at the Cabaret Voltaire, uses invented syllables instead of words. The assemblage combines found objects into three-dimensional constructions. None of these forms require traditional artistic skill, which was central to Dada's critique of the art establishment.

A 2023 book published by Springer, Dada's Subject and Structure: Performing Ideology Poorly, argues that Dadaist praxis was far more theoretically incisive than previous scholarship has indicated. The book shows how Dada simultaneously prefigured structuralist theories of subject formation and pre-performed post-structuralist critiques of those theories. Read more at Springer.

Historical Context and Origins

Dada was born in Zurich in 1916, in the middle of World War I. Switzerland was neutral, and Zurich became a refuge for artists, intellectuals, and political dissidents from across Europe. Hugo Ball, a German writer and philosopher, opened the Cabaret Voltaire on February 5, 1916, at Spiegelgasse 1. The cabaret was named after the 18th-century satirist Voltaire and was intended as a venue for poetry, music, and performance. The founding group included Ball, his partner Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara (a Romanian poet), Marcel Janco (a Romanian artist), Hans Arp (an Alsatian artist), and Richard Huelsenbeck (a German writer).

The Cabaret Voltaire operated for only five months, but in that time it established the principles of Dada: nonsense as a response to the nonsense of war, anti-art as a response to an art establishment that had proven incapable of preventing catastrophe, and internationalism as a response to the nationalism that had caused the war. The group published a magazine called Dada beginning in July 1916, and by 1917 the movement had spread beyond Zurich.

The war was the essential context. As Hugo Ball wrote in his diary: "The word and the image are surrounded by a thick crust of the worn-out and the used-up. A spring-cleaning is due. The present promoted a world war, and this world war has promoted the present." Dada was the spring-cleaning.

Key Artists and Pioneers

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

Duchamp was not in Zurich. He was in New York, where he had moved in 1915, but his work became central to Dada. His Bicycle Wheel (1913, original lost, replica at MoMA), a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, was the first readymade. His Fountain (1917, original lost, replica at Tate) was a urinal submitted to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York. The society, which claimed to accept all works, rejected it. Duchamp resigned from the society in protest. The readymade was the most radical Dada invention: an object that becomes art not through the artist's skill but through the artist's choice. A 2025 book, Morée: Marcel Duchamp and the Hidden Origin of Dada, argues that a painting called Morée, created around 1915-1916 within Duchamp's New York circle, may have been a silent precursor to Dada. Read more at Knowledge Commons.

Hugo Ball (1886-1927)

Ball was the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire and the first Dada performer. His performance of the nonsense poem on June 23, 1916, wearing a costume of cardboard tubes that restricted his movement, is one of the defining moments of Dada. Ball wrote in his diary that the poem was an attempt to "give back to language its priestly dignity." He left Zurich in 1917, disillusioned with the direction Dada was taking, and returned to Catholicism.

Tristan Tzara (1896-1963)

Tzara was the propagandist of Dada. He wrote the Dada manifestos, organized the publications, and promoted the movement across Europe. His Sept manifestes Dada (Seven Dada Manifestos), published in 1924, are the most important theoretical documents of the movement. Tzara moved to Paris in 1919 and brought Dada with him, where it merged with the nascent Surrealist movement before being superseded by it.

Hans Arp (1886-1966)

Arp was the visual artist of Zurich Dada. His collages from 1916 to 1919, such as Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance (1916-1917, MoMA), used torn paper dropped onto a backing sheet and glued wherever it fell. The use of chance was a deliberate rejection of artistic control and composition. Arp later became associated with Surrealism and then with abstraction.

George Grosz and John Heartfield (Berlin Dada)

The Berlin Dada group, which formed in 1917, was more politically engaged than the Zurich group. Grosz and Heartfield developed photomontage, cutting photographs from newspapers and magazines and reassembling them into savage political satires. Heartfield's The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little Man Asks for Big Gifts (1932) shows Hitler receiving a pile of coins from a wealthy industrialist. Grosz's The Fit for Active Service (1917-1918, MoMA) shows a skeleton being declared fit for military service, a direct attack on the German war machine.

Suzanne Duchamp (1889-1963)

Suzanne Duchamp, Marcel's sister, was a Dada artist in Paris who has been largely overlooked. A 2024-2025 retrospective at Kunsthaus Zurich and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt gave her her own story for the first time. Her Radiation of Two Solitary Separates Apart (1916-1920) uses gold paint, silver tinfoil, brass clock gears, and glass beads to create a proto-Art Deco diagram of relationships between geometric shapes. She called her Dada period her turn to "subjective" painting. Read more at ArtNews.

Phases and Evolution

Dada can be divided into several geographic phases. Zurich Dada (1916-1918) was the founding period, centered on the Cabaret Voltaire. New York Dada (1915-1920) was centered on Duchamp and his circle, including Man Ray and Francis Picabia. Berlin Dada (1917-1923) was the most politically radical, producing photomontage and political satire. Paris Dada (1919-1922) was the final phase, where Dada merged with and was replaced by Surrealism under the leadership of Andre Breton.

The end of Dada is usually dated to 1924, the year Breton published the first Surrealist Manifesto. Breton had been a Dada participant but found Dada's negativity unsatisfying. He wanted a movement that destroyed in order to build, not just to destroy. Surrealism took Dada's rejection of convention and redirected it toward the exploration of the unconscious. A 2024 book from Routledge, Dada and Its Later Manifestations in the Geographic Margins, explored the roots of Dada in Israel, Romania, Poland, and North America, arguing that Dada persists as an ongoing reexamination of the fundamental tenets of art. Read more at Routledge.

Legacy and Influence

Dada's influence is paradoxical: a movement that rejected art became one of the most influential movements in art history. The readymade established the idea that the artist's choice is as important as the artist's skill, which runs through Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and contemporary installation art. Photomontage influenced political graphic design and advertising. Dada's use of chance and automatic techniques fed directly into Surrealism. Performance art, Fluxus, and punk all owe debts to Dada's anti-art stance.

Related Terms

Dadaism is the direct precursor to Surrealism, which took Dada's rejection of convention and redirected it toward the unconscious. Duchamp's readymade connects to the concept of the found object and to later movements that used everyday materials. Dada's photomontage technique relates to Cubism's collage, though Dada used it for political rather than formal purposes. For more on Dada's legacy, read our post on collage as art, from Cubist newspapers to Hannah Hoch.

See Dada in Person

The best collection of Dada works is at the Kunsthaus Zurich, which holds materials from the Cabaret Voltaire period. The Museum of Modern Art in New York holds Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel and works by Arp, Grosz, and Heartfield. The Tate in London holds a replica of Fountain. The Cabaret Voltaire itself still exists as a venue at Spiegelgasse 1 in Zurich, though it has been renovated.

If you want to trace Dada from its origins to its legacy, start at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, then visit the Kunsthaus Zurich for the founding works, and end at MoMA for the readymades and photomontages. You will see how a group of refugees in a Zurich bar produced one of the most consequential rejections in art history. For more on the broader context, read our entries on Surrealism and Cubism, or explore our post on art and protest.