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| First International Dada Fair | |
|---|---|
| Name | First International Dada Fair |
| Native name | Erste Internationale Dada-Messe |
| Location | Berlin |
| Venue | Grand Rex |
| Dates | 1920 |
| Organizers | Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, John Heartfield |
| Type | Art exhibition |
First International Dada Fair The First International Dada Fair was a 1920 avant-garde exhibition in Berlin that brought together artists associated with Dada and radical modernism, provoking debates across Weimar Republic cultural circles. The fair showcased works by proponents of photomontage, collage, and anti-establishment performance, drawing attention from critics connected to Expressionism, New Objectivity, and international art networks including figures linked to Zurich, Paris, and New York. It functioned as both an exhibition and a manifesto-like intervention in post-World War I aesthetic politics.
The fair emerged from interactions among émigré and German artists who had participated in events like the Cabaret Voltaire, Sopro, and gatherings associated with Hôtel Dada and the Galerie Montaigne. The context included the aftermath of World War I, the cultural ferment of the Weimar Republic, and responses to movements such as Futurism, Constructivism, and Bauhaus. Key antecedents included publications like Der Dada and exhibitions such as the First International Exhibition of Modern Art and shows organized by Galerie Dada and Galerie Der Sturm. Intellectual currents from figures connected to Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst informed the fair’s ideological framing.
Organization was led by a core group of Berlin Dadaists including Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, and John Heartfield, allied with contributors like Otto Dix, Hermann Max Pechstein, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, and Claude Cahun. Support and participation extended to international artists and writers: Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Picabia, Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, Henri Rousseau, and André Breton. Institutional and journalistic interlocutors involved figures tied to Berliner Tageblatt, Die Aktion, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and galleries such as Der Sturm and Galerie van Diemen. The fair’s committee navigated relations with patrons and municipal authorities linked to Berlin City Council and cultural officials from the Prussian State.
The exhibition presented photomontages, collages, readymades, installations, satirical paintings, and found-object constructions, including politically charged works by John Heartfield, satirical caricatures by George Grosz, and photomontages by Hannah Höch. Displayed pieces drew formal links to innovations from Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, Max Ernst’s frottage and collage, and Kurt Schwitters’s Merz constructions, alongside paintings by Otto Dix and works by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee that resonated with debates about abstraction. The fair also included textual and performance elements referencing manifestos from Tristan Tzara, experimental writings by Hugo Ball, and typographic experiments akin to F. T. Marinetti’s layouts. Objects and tableaux incorporated references to contemporaneous events like the Spartacist uprising and iconography associated with politicians such as Gustav Noske and personalities like Max Liebermann.
The fair provoked polarized responses across press organs and cultural institutions: defenders ranged from avant-garde journals such as Die Aktion and Der Sturm to sympathetic critics linked to Alfred Kerr and Herwarth Walden, while detractors came from conservative outlets like the Vossische Zeitung and nationalist commentators connected to Ernst Jünger sympathizers. Police and municipal attention mirrored controversies seen at earlier confrontations involving Futurism and Expressionism, generating debates in venues like the Münchner Kammerspiele and discussions in salons frequented by Else Lasker-Schüler and Bertolt Brecht. International responses echoed across channels in Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, London, and New York, mobilizing figures such as Paul Éluard, André Gide, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound to comment indirectly on avant-garde strategies. The press exchange intensified dialogues about censorship, taste, and the role of art during the unstable Weimar years.
The fair consolidated Berlin as a node of Dadaist innovation, influencing later movements including Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), Fluxus, and postwar conceptual practices. Participants’ techniques—photomontage, montage, and readymade assembly—were taken up by artists in Paris, Moscow, New York, and London and by photographers and graphic designers associated with Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Constructivism. Institutional responses shaped acquisitions at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Centre Pompidou while scholarly attention from historians like Walter Benjamin and critics such as Clement Greenberg reframed Dada’s historiography. The fair’s iconography reappeared in political art during the Weimar Republic and later in anti-establishment movements tied to 1968 protests and Situationist International practices.
Visual records include posters, monochrome and hand-colored photographs, photomontage catalog plates, and city press reproductions circulated in journals like Der Sturm, Die Aktion, and Cahiers d'Art. Surviving catalogues and ephemera were archived in institutions such as the Berlinische Galerie, Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and are cited in monographs on Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, and George Grosz. Photographers and documentarians linked to the fair included contemporaries associated with László Moholy-Nagy, August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Berenice Abbott, whose reproductions helped shape the event’s visual legacy. Archival collections and exhibition inventories preserved in the Stadtmuseum Berlin and university archives continue to inform scholarship and retrospectives.
Category:1920 in art Category:Dada Category:Art exhibitions in Germany