Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire, founded by Hugo Ball with his companion Emmy Hennings, and in Berlin in 1917. New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.
Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp, better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.
Hugo Ball was a German author, poet, and essentially the founder of the Dada movement in European art in Zürich in 1916. Among other accomplishments, he was a pioneer in the development of sound poetry.
Cabaret Voltaire was the name of a short-lived artistic nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland in 1916. It was founded by Hugo Ball, with his companion Emmy Hennings, in the back room of Holländische Meierei, Spiegelgasse 1, on February 5, 1916, as a cabaret for artistic and political purposes. Other founding members were Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp.
Jan Theiler, alias Pastor Leumund is a German artist, musician and political activist.
Emmy Hennings was a German poet and performing artist, founder of the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire with her second husband Hugo Ball.
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer.
Lennie Lee is a South African conceptual artist who lives and works in London.
Ingo Giezendanner is a painter and installation artist and member of the Kroesos Foundation. He lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland.
The Kroesos Foundation is an artistic collective set up by Luxemburgese Artist Mark Divo. Between January and March 2002 they occupied the building in the centre of Zurich where the original European Dada movement began, as a response to the horrors of the first World War, which came to be known as the Cabaret Voltaire. The collective organised a number of events/ performances over a period of three months until they were forced to leave the building. In spite of their eviction they managed to have the building turned into a museum. Members of the collective, apart from Divo, include Aiana Calugar, Dan Jones, Lennie Lee, ingo giezendanner and Pastor Leumund Cult. Throughout the winter of 2002 they were described as neo-Dadaists by the Swiss and international press. The group have exhibited in a number of international exhibitions including the real Biennale at the Kinsky Palace in Prague.
Joseph Pisani is an American contemporary artist, abstract painter, and photographer, living in Zurich, Switzerland.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, were a Swiss artist duo that collaborated beginning in 1979. Their best-known work is the film Der Lauf der Dinge, described by The Guardian as being "post apocalyptic", as it concerned chain reactions and the ways in which objects flew, crashed and exploded across the studio in which it was shot. Fischli lives and works in Zürich; Weiss died on 27 April 2012.
Electroboy is a Swiss model, author, conceptioner, graphic designer, electronic musician and music producer. He lives in Berlin. Electroboy produces electronic trash-pop and electroclash with simple, cheeky content based on a dadaistic philosophy. He also creates series of vector graphics to call up for more consumer responsibility and to promote a vegan lifestyle.
Arthur Segal was a Romanian artist and author.
Mimmo Paladino is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker. He is a leading name in the Transvanguardia artistic movement and one of the many European artists to revive Expressionism in the 1980s.
Marc Lee is a Swiss new media artist working in the fields of interactive installation art, internet art, performance art and video art.
Kerim Seiler is a Swiss artist.
Kris Lemsalu is a contemporary artist based in Tallinn, Estonia and Vienna, Austria. She studied art at the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Eccentric with color and material, she uses props, costumes, and other natural materials to portray her artwork. In these installations, Lemsalu sculpts an installation that "gives birth to a world of shamanic force, visionary weirdness, and collective revival." By playing with traditions, Lemsalu blurs the origin and scenically removes their dogma. She avoids "concrete labeling, simultaneously showing us the absurdity of as well as the effectiveness of rituals. From this collective transformative euphoria emerges a belief in the possibility of human redemption." "A punk pagan trickster feminist sci-fi shaman, Kris Lemsalu gathers together both collected and crafted objects into totemic sculptures and hallucinatory environments, animated with performances by the artist and her coterie of collaborators;" her work being shown in many places, including Berlin, Copenhagen and Tokyo. In 2015, she participated in Frieze Art Fair New York, where her work Whole Alone 2 was selected among of five best exhibits by the Frieze New York jury.
RELAX is an artist collective founded by Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza and Daniel Hauser.
Marcel Slodki was a Polish painter, graphic artist and stage designer. He was post-impressionist associated with the dadaist movement. He died during World War II, after being arrested in France and sent to the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp c. 1943–1944.
