Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris

by Leah Dickerman (Editor), Dorothea Dietrich (Text by), Brigid Doherty (Text by), Sabine Kriebel (Text by), Janine Mileaf (Text by), Michael Taylor (Text by), Matthew Witkovsky (Text by), Earl Powell (Preface by), Jean Arp (Artist), Tristan Tzara (Artist), Marcel Duchamp (Artist), Kurt Schwitters (Artist), Francis Picabia (Artist), Max Ernst (Artist), Man Ray (Photographer), Leah Dickerman (Text by)

Overview

Now available in paperback, this lavishly illustrated and astonishingly comprehensive volume stands as the definitive study of the influential but deliberately elusive international Dada movement of the early twentieth century. Organized according to the primary city centers where this shifting, quintessentially avant garde movement emerged, Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris features the work of 40 key artists, both infamous and lesser-known, including Louis Aragon, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, André Breton, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and Kurt Schwitters, to name just a few, in media spanning painting, sculpture, photography, collage, photomontage, prints and graphic work. Dynamically designed with an uncommon intelligence suited to the complexity of the movement itself, it contains hundreds of reproductions of works which, until the major traveling exhibition of 2005 and 2006 for which this book was originally produced, had for the most part never been seen in one place together. Documentary images, topical essays and an invaluable illustrated chronology of the movement make this volume uniquely essential, along with witty chronicles of events in each city center, a selected bibliography and biographies of each artist, accompanied by Dada-era photographs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780894683138
Publisher:	National Gallery of Art, Washington/D.A.P.
Publication date:	03/01/2008
Pages:	536
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 12.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kurt Schwitters was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1887. He studied at the Hanover School for Applied Arts and the Art Academy in Dresden. In 1911 he participated in his first exhibition. In 1919 the first pictures of his Merz were published, as was his poem An Anna Blume. Throughout the 20s, he devoted most of his energy to working on the Merzbau and Merz magazine, and also founded a successful advertising agency in 1924. Upon the Nazi defamation of his work in 1937, he emigrated to Norway, later continuing on to England, where he died in 1948. Five years earlier, an air raid over his home in Hanover had destroyed the original Merzbau.

Born in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray began his professional life as a painter before taking up photography in 1915. In Paris during the 1920s his career as a fashion photographer and portraitist took off, and it was there that he discovered the possibilities of cameraless photography. He continued to paint and take photographs both in the United States and Paris until his death in 1976. He has been the subject of major exhibitions at museums throughout the world, and is one of the best-known photographers of the twentieth century.

Leah Dickerman is Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art.

Leah Dickerman is Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art.

Dorothea Dietrich is Chair of Academic Studies and Associate Professor of Art History at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington.

Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Sabine T. Kriebel is a Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art at theUniversity College, Cork, Ireland.

Janine Mileaf is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Michael R. Taylor is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Matthew S. Witkovsky is Assistant Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.