Dadaism : 3D Gallery

Dada

Dadaism or also called Dada wasn't a style of art but more an artistic and literary movement started in Zurich, Switzerland, by Hugo Ball. This movement was expressing disgust towards the social, political and cultural ethics.

Sources:

-Artland

“Marcel Duchamp, 1919, L.H.O.O.Q., Published in 391, n. 12, March 1920.” Wikipedia , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q.

Cabaret Voltaire

On February 5th, 1916 Hugo Ball, founder of Dada opened Cabaret Voltaire. A place where intellectuals that had the same ideology and frustration could express themselves with poetry, art, music, dance, etc.

Sources:

- Culture Trip

- Artland

“The First International Dada Fair, Held in Berlin, June–August 1920. PHOTO: © ADOC-PHOTOS/CORBIS.” WSJ Magazine , Toni Perrottet, 16 Jan. 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/dada-100-years-later-1453223133.

Hugo Ball

In 1886 in Germany, the father of the art movement “Dada” Hugo Ball was also an actor, writer, artist, poet and harsh social critic. In 1906 Ball moved to Munich to study philosophy and sociology, while in 1910 attended drama school in Berlin. Soon when the war started he moved to neutral Switzerland more specifically in Zurich with his future wife. The main reason of the patriotism of the war went against his beliefs. Hugo Ball and his wife founded the Cabaret Voltaire where they displayed multiple of their exhibitions. Hugo died in 1927 due to stomach cancer.

Sources:

-Britannica

-HugoBall

“Arp Museum.” Arp Museum, https://arpmuseum.org/veranstaltungen/detail/dada-feiertag-hans-arp-258.html.

George Grosz

George Grosz was a German artist that was famous for his paintings and caricatures, he was also part of the Dada movement.

Grosz from 1909 to 1912 he studied in Dresden and then spent some time in Paris. When WW1 started he joined the army twice but then he was discharged, so he moved to Berlin and sketched prostitutes, disfigured veterans and personifications of the war.

After the war he joined the Dada movement, and soon became a key-figure. He became famous for his expressive social caricatures demonstrating his disgust of the post-war and his technique of photo-montage. His artwork was often demonstrating hatred towards the military, social decadence and Nazism. During the 1950s he started to drink heavily and by 1959 when he returned to his old parents flat, he fell down the stairs when he was drunk and died by the age of 65.

Sources:

-Christie's

-Britannica

“George Grosz in 1921.” Wikipedia , 28 Oct. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Grosz.

Otto Dix

Otto Dix, born in 1891 was a German printmaker and painter, notorious for his ruthless point of view of the war and the Weimar Republic. In 1910 he moved to Dresden to attend the Dresden Academy of Arts, where he mastered painting portraits and landscapes. When WWI started Dix was passionate about singing in the army, but then in 1918 he was discharged. After experiencing the war he soon was traumatized and had a feeling of disgust towards it. In 1920 Dix met George Grosz when he returned to Munich in 1919, and influenced by Grosz’s Dada art he started to include collage into his artworks. In 1925, together with Grosz and other artists that had the same ideology staged an exhibition called Neue Sachlichkeit. In 1927 he started working as a art teacher at the Dresden Academy, but in 1933 when the Nazi came to power they fired him, because he was considered a degenerate artist. The Nazis criminalized his works because it was disturbing the German people’s ethics and spirit. 260 of Dix’s works were confiscated and displayed in the “degenerate exhibit” an exhibition organized by the Nazis to destroy the career of those that were considered degenerate. Dix died in 1969 due to a second stroke, at the age of 77.

Sources:

-Tate

-Wikipedia

“Otto Dix (Photograph by Hugo Erfurth, c. 1933).” Wikipedia , 10 Nov. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Dix.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879; he was born in a family of musicians but later he turned to art, so in 1898 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

When the war started, he joined the army. A the start he said that he would be indifferent but when his two friends died in the battlefield, he was in agony. Soon he turned his distress into pen and ink lithographs on war themes and abstract artworks. Klee was inspired by multiple types of art such as Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism but his biggest inspiration was Kadinsky, godfather of abstraction and his friend.

In 1923 Kadinsky and Klee formed a group with two other artists called the Blue Four, while he was teaching art at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931. Then he taught art at the Dusseldorf Academy for two years when the Nazis fired him because of his degenerate ideology. So he moved back to Switzerland with his family where he died due to wasting disease and scleroderma and died in 1940.

Sources:

-Artsy

-PaulKlee

-Biography

“Paul Klee in 1911.” Wikipedia , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee.

The Fountain

The Fountain is a sculpture made in 1917 by Marcel Duchamp that has revolutionized the definition of art. This piece of art is simply a urinary displaced from its normal function, put upside down and marked with a pseudonym "R.Mutt". Marcel in 1917 presented the artwork in an exhibition in front of the board of the Society of Independent Artists, that argued over its significance. This sculpture is an example of readymade. An ordinary, everyday object displaced and presented as art. Marcel Duchamp was notorious for his readymades, and started a revolution that nowadays is still talked about.

Sources:
-Artsy

“Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 (Art Gallery) Following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists Exhibit, with Entry Tag Visible. The Backdrop Is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley.[1].” Wikipedia , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp).

The Trench

The Trench made by Otto Dix between 1920 and 1923, is an example of Triptychs, a painting composed of three panels. The first panel shows German soldiers going to war, in the second dead and decomposing corpses,while in the third German survivors struggling to get home.

Horrified by the war he created this painting to share his experience thought multiple paintings, but this artwork was the most controversial at the time. In 1923 this piece was displayed at the a museum in Cologne, but then during the Nazi rule multiple of his artworks inclufìding The Trench were confiscated, exhibited in the Degenerate Museum and then some were destroyed.

In January 1940 the painting was bought by an art dealer, but nobody knows what happened to the painting.

Sources:
-Wikipedia

-The Great War

-Tate

“Black and White Photograph of The Trench.” Wikipedia , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(Dix).

War Cripples

War Cripples was made in 1920 by Otto Dix. After the war 80.000 veterans came back from war with severe wounds, so Dix painted the War Cripples to demonstrate the damage that the war carries. In the painting there are four war veterans that are on crutches or in wheel chairs because they have a part of the body amputated. Dix also tries to ironize it by placing the veterans in front of a shoemaker, which since they don't have legs they don't need it.

Just like The Trench this artwork ws also confiscated during the Nazi period, and then burned.

Sources:

- Degenerate Art

-Moma

“Degenerateart.” Degenerateart, https://degenerart.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/war-cripples-by-otto-dix/.