Dadaism is a complicated movement that generated in the 19-teens in Western Europe. It was mainly a Nihilistic movement, which centered itself around France, Germany, and Switzerland. It started around 1916 and most historians agree that it came to its conclusion in the 1920s. However, Schwitters kept on painting into the 30s. (More on this later) Dadaism had a certain eccentricity since its initial enception. Historians disagree whether the movement started in this place or that, but an overwhelming majority agree that a Cabaret in Switzerland was where it started. Going through a dictionary (French) a knife was randomly inserted. It came up to be "Dada" which literally means "hobby-horse" or a horse that a child would play with (mostly wood). The artists in that cafe decided that dada represented their protests and anti-aesthetic actions. These actions came about by a mutual disgust and distaste for the middle classes bewailment and bemoaning over World War I. When analyzed carefully, dada art seems to engender a certain quality of anarchy. As seen in the collage "The Hitler Gang", the artists often times rejected social standards of beauty and laws. In fact, many dada artists felt it was there place to demolish aesthetic standards by use of irrationality in their paintings. They believed that you could discover genuine reality through the destruction of aesthetic tradition and popular culture. A year after its supposed inception in 1916, the movement transplanted itself to Berlin. Berlin at this time was creaking to the breaking point because of the Treaty of Versailles reparations. This is where the dada movement got political. It took many political subjects and used them for the paintings ("The Hitler Gang" as an example). This is where the movement flourished until the 1920s, when it started to dwindle in numbers. The artists began to move to different expressionistic views of the world, mainly to the offshoot of surrealism (see Dali and Surrealism for more information about surrealism). This happened just after 1922, however Kurt Schwitters, a leading dadaist artist stayed in Germany and continued the dadaist movement during World War II.

I found little in my research about Kurt Schwitters early life. He was born in 1887. Once grown, he became a veritable "renaissance man" of the 1900s. He was all at once an artist, graphic designere, typographer, set designer, and an acclaimed poet. He was a leader of the Dadaist movement in Germany. He moved to Hannover in 1919 (right after dada had "transplated" in Berlin) and started his own form which he called Merz. Some historians claim that this was after ComMERZ Banks. Wherever it came from, Schwitters started publishing his works and other dadaist's works in his magazine aptly called "Merz". This publication ran from 1923-1932. This is the history of Kurt Schwitters. He was the most influencial dadaist in his time and continues to be so, in the modern dadaist philosophy. (Yes, dada is still around).

The above picture is of the "Hitler Gang" collage by Kurt Schwitters. It was completed around 1944, during the height of Hitler's career as dictator. It was done in Hannover, Germany, where Schwitters lived. The collage was put together with newspapers and other related matierial. It is expressionistic because it expresses political feeling about the time he lived in. Although it is a hard piece to interpret, my thoughts are that the Jewish Star of David, shown as a weave near the bottom, reflects the trouble of the Jews. The book page that talks about the haughty man shows that the Hitler Gangs (the Nazis) were very haughty. Also, the propaganda used to create this collage shows the immense amount of force-fed idealogies in the day. I chose this piece of art because of its immense symbolism to the time of trouble in Germany. I also chose it because it is one of the only dada pieces that was created after 1920. This shows that even in times of lacking and times of political strife, art can and will go on.