List of Dadaists | List of Dada Artists

Artists of Dada | Prominent Dada Artists

Here is a list of the pioneers of Dadaism who were the most active and prominent Dadaists –

• Pierre Albert-Birot (1876 – 1967)
• Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 9, 1918)
• Louis Aragon (October 3, 1897 – December 24, 1982)
• Jean Arp (September 16, 1886 – June 7, 1966)
• Alice Bailly (February 25, 1872 – January 1 1938)
• Johannes Baader (June 22, 1875 – January 15, 1955)
• Johannes Theodor Baargeld (October 9, 1892 – August 16 or 17, 1927)
• Hugo Ball (February 22, 1886 – September 14, 1927) – Hugo Ball was a German-born author, poet and artist who is credited with leading the Dada movement in Zurich. In 1916, Ball penned the Dada Manifesto, in which he claimed that he coined the term ‘Dada’ by randomly choosing the word from the dictionary.
• André Breton (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) André Breton, author of the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, was an influential theorizer of both Dada and Surrealism. Born in France, he emigrated to New York during World War II, where he greatly influenced the Abstract Expressionists.
• Gino Cantarelli
• Arthur Cravan (May 22, 1887 – November 1918?)
• Jean Crotti (April 24, 1878 – January 30, 1958)
• Theo van Doesburg (August 30, 1883 – March 7, 1931)
• Will Dockery
• Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) – The French artist Marcel Duchamp was an instrumental figure in the avant-garde art worlds of Paris and New York. Moving through Dada, Surrealism, readymades, sculpture, and installation, his work involves conceptual play and an implicit attack on bourgeois art sensibilities.
• Paul Éluard (December 14, 1895 – November 18, 1952)
• Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 – April 1, 1976)
• Julius Evola (May 19, 1898 – June 11, 1974)
• Lyonel Feininger (July 17, 1871 – January 13, 1956)
• Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927)
• George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959)
• Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971)
• John Heartfield (June 19, 1891 – April 26, 1968)
• Emmy Hennings (February 17, 1885 – August 10, 1948)
• Wieland Herzfelde (April 11, 1896 – November 23, 1988)
• Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978)
• Richard Huelsenbeck (April 23, 1892 – April 30, 1974)
• Marcel Janco (May 24, 1895 – April 21, 1984)
• Tsuji Jun (October 4, 1884 – November 24, 1944)
• Hans Leybold (April 2, 1892 – September 8, 1914)
• FilippoTommaso Marinetti (December 22, 1876 – December 2, 1944)
• Agnes Elizabeth Ernst Meyer (1887 – 1970)
• PranasMorkūnas (October 9, 1900 – December 28, 1941)
• Clément Pansaers (May 1, 1885, – October 31, 1922)
• Francis Picabia (January 28, 1879 – November 30, 1953)
• Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976)
• Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes June 19, 1884 – July 9, 1974)
• Hans Richter (April 6, 1888 – February 1, 1976)
• Kurt Schwitters (June 20, 1887 – January 8, 1948)
• Rudolf Schlichter (December 6, 1890 – May 3, 1955)
• Walter Serner (January 15, 1889 – 1942)
• Philippe Soupault (August 2, 1897 – March 12, 1990)
• Sophie Taeuber (January 19, 1889 – January 13, 1943)
• Tristan Tzara (April 4 or 16, 1896 – December 25, 1963) – Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French poet, playwright, and avant-garde performer who played a key role in early Zurich Dada. A proponent of pure automatic techniques, he had an at-times contentious relationship with the Dada’s Surrealist direction in Paris.
• Takahashi Shinkichi (January 28, 1901 – June 5, 1987)
• Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998)
• Marius de Zayas (March 13, 1880 – January 10, 1961)
• Yi Sang (September 14, 1910 – April 17, 1937)
• Yves Klein (April 28, 1928 – June 6, 1962) (see Neo-Dada)
• Christian Schad (August 21, 1894 – February 25, 1982)
• Viking Eggeling (October 21, 1880 – May 19, 1925)
• Francis Picabia was a French artist who worked in Dada, Surrealist, and abstract modes, often employing language and mechanical imagery. He published the Dada journal 391 in Barcelona and America.
• Man Ray was an American artist in Paris whose photograms, objects, drawings, and other works played an important role in Dada, Surrealism, modern photography, and avant-garde art at large
• Hans Arp (also known as Jean Arp) was a German-French artist who incorporated chance, randomness, and organic forms into his sculptures, paintings, and collages. He was involved with Zurich Dada, Surrealism, and the Abstraction-Creation movement
• Kurt Schwitters was a German multi-media artist who was particularly influential in the development of the Dada and Constructivist movements. By the 1920s, Schwitters was heavily involved in the international avant-garde, touring the world with artists like Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara. These travels earned him wide acclaim in the U.S. and scrutiny in his native Germany, which would soon come under the control of the Third Reich.
• Hannah Hoch was a German-born Dada artist. She and Raoul Hausmann were among the first artists to work in photomontage. Hoch is most famous for her works dating from the Weimar years, most notably 1919’s ‘Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany,’ which critiqued Weimar Germany.

Hans Arp and his wife are often attributed with creating the most important Dada Art.  Through a series of collages, Hans Arp created art by chance.  Standing he would drop small square different colored papers and drop them down onto a larger sheet.  Wherever the smaller squares landed he would glue them to the sheet provoking visceral reactions in art.  Hans was also interested in I-Ching coins that were apparently used to tell fortunes.  Arp was frustrated with geometrically correct art arrangements and labelled his Dada art as ‘anti-art”.

Check out some of the most popular dada art

Untitled (Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance) (1917)

These two pieces show the randomness of Hans Arp Art.  His collages were made purely on chance.

Performing at Cabaret Voltaire (1916)

Wearing this costume he designed Hugo Ball performed his poem called ‘Karawane’.  The poem contained syllables that were nonsensical delivered with different emotions and rhythms creating an emotive work that could not be understood.  If words were used they would be stressed especially during vowel sequences.  Set below is a Hugo Ball poem –

Why not listen to some of Hugo Ball’s poems here….

The Gramineous Bicycle (1921)

Hans Arp also worked with Max Ernst and together they brought dada art and Dadaism to Paris.  Many people believe dada art had a great impact on future surrealism and cubism art works that would later outgrow the dada movement.  An early example of one of their works is the Gramineous Bicycle shown above which shows abstracted elements to create a whole piece.  Max Ernst’s art increasingly dealt with human body parts deconstructed to make a dream like visual image.  Plant drawings were deconstructed into biomorphic forms foreign to the piece.  Ernst collages originated in dada form but later he developed into Surrealistic works.

The Role of Visual Art in Dada

Many Dada artists were not concerned with how their art looked or was perceived but more importantly to the ideas and emotions that their works evoked.  Art was not the end result that was desired but a means to illuminate and achieve a voice that would give true criticism to the times that we live in.  Dadaist loved and hated modernity and all that was involved in media and technologies that contemporary life defined.

Dadaists redefined the boundaries of what art could be using pure chance and unorthodox methods, means or even venues to produce provocatively spontaneous works often that were irreverent but sometimes even irrelevant.  Collages, games, theatre, performances, scissors, glue, photo montages anything could be used in dada art and nothing was taboo.  Dada art challenged the notion that an artist has to be trained or skilled to create relevant and irrelevant artworks.