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Japanese, 20th century, male.

Active in the USA since 1961.

Born 6 July 1936, in Nagoya (Aichi Prefecture).

Painter.

Conceptual Art.

Neo-Dadaist Organisers group.

Shusaku Arakawa studied medicine and mathematics at Tokyo University (1954-1958) and art at Musashino Art University, Tokyo. He began his career in the 1960s when he concerned himself with the representation of impossible space, which corresponded to Marcel Duchamp’s scientific interest in the fourth dimension. In 1960 he was involved in anti-art and Neo-Dadaism in Tokyo and produced his first happenings....

French, 20th century, male.

Born 16 September 1886, in Strasbourg; died 7 June 1966, in Basel.

Collage artist, engraver, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, poet.

Dadaism.

Der Moderne Bund, Dadaist groups in Zurich and Cologne, Artistes Radicaux, Das Neue Leben, Paris Surrealist Group, Abstraction-Création.

Hans Arp joined the École des Arts et Métiers in Strasbourg in 1902, at the age of 16. In 1903 he began painting and contributed to a local magazine. In 1904 he made his first trip to Paris. From 1905 to 1907 he studied under Ludwig von Hoffmann at the fine arts academy in Weimar, where he attended modern art exhibitions. He returned to Strasbourg, which his family then left for Weggis, on the edge of the Lac des Quatre Cantons in Switzerland. Between 1908 and 1910 he made a second trip to Paris and worked for a time at the Académie Julian. In Weggis he completed his first Abstract compositions and learned the art of modelling. In 1911 he co-founded the group...

German, 20th century, male.

Born 21 June 1876, in Stuttgart; died 15 January 1955, in Bavaria.

Architect, photomontage artist, collage artist, writer.

Dadaism.

Johannes Baader, who was active as an artist for three years, from 1918 to 1921, was a former architect who had created the plans for the famous Hagenbeck Zoo in Stellingen. After the age of 40, he became a follower and champion of the Dada movement in Berlin, calling himself ...

German, 20th century, male.

Born in Cologne; died 1927, in the Tyrol.

Poet, collage artist, photomontage artist.

Dadaism.

Johannes Baargeld was the son of a banker from Cologne and was involved in the revolutionary unrest following World War I as one of the founders of the Communist party in the Rhineland. He established a left-wing extremist newspaper of art and politics, ...

German, 20th century, male.

Active in Switzerland.

Born 1886, in Pirmassens; died 1927, in San Abbondio, Switzerland.

Mixed media, poet.

Dadaism.

Zurich Dadaist.

Ball was a poet, producer and founder of the Dada movement in Zurich. His Cabaret Voltaire brought together all the intellectuals and artists in exile, who, at the height of the war in ...

Swiss, 20th century, male.

Born 3 May 1886, in Basel; died 9 October 1942.

Painter, sculptor.

Dadaism, Neo-Constructivism.

Groups: Artistes Radicaux, Das Neue Leben.

From 1917, Baumann exhibited at the Galerie Dada in Zurich and in 1918 he became a member of the group The New Life...

Swiss, 20th century, male.

Active from 1949 active in France.

Born 18 July 1935, in Naples, to an Irish mother and a Swiss-French father.

Painter (mixed media), installation artist.

Neo-Dadaism, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Mail Art.

Ben spent periods in Turkey, Egypt and Greece before settling in Nice in 1949. At the age of 16 he broke off his studies, working in a bookshop and then becoming a second-hand goods dealer. However, Ben never ceased to contemplate the legacy created by Marcel Duchamp and the consequences of the ...

German, 20th century, male.

Born 1921, in Krefeld; died 23 January 1986, in Düsseldorf.

Performance artist, installation artist, assemblage artist, engraver.

Neo-Dadaism, Fluxus, Conceptual Art.

Joseph Beuys spent his youth in Cleves. Relatively little is known about his early years, but he is thought to have begun studying natural sciences when he was mobilised in 1941 as a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe. In winter 1943, his plane was shot down over the Russian steppes near Sevastopol. According to Beuys, some Tatars found him buried in the cabin wreckage and just managed to save his life by smearing the wounds of his half-frozen body with animal fat and wrapping him in felt. There is some doubt as to the truth of parts of this story, but certainly the metaphorical power of the fat and felt became a recurring theme throughout the rest of his career....

20th century, male.

Born 1897; died 1969.

Collage artist.

Dadaism.

An official photographer on Harper's Bazaar and U.S. Vogue; celebrated for his fashion photography. Erwin Blumenfeld also produced Dadaist-inspired collages while living in Amsterdam in 1914.

London, 4 Dec 1985: Self-portrait (1922, pastel, 16¼ × 12¼ ins/41 × 31 cm) ...

American, 20th century, male.

Born 7 March 1926, in Halfway (Oregon); died 5 December 2008, in Cologne.

Painter, sculptor. Multimedia.

Neo-Dadaism, Fluxus.

From 1946 to 1950, George Brecht studied physical sciences at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science, and from 1950 to 1955, he trained as a chemist. He met John Cage in ...

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1896, in Termonde; died 1965, in Antwerp.

Painter, poet.

Dadaism.

Primarily an Expressionist poet, Gaston Burssens wrote several collections of poems. His painting was Expressionist at the outset, later developing into Dadaistic and Surrealist figuration.

American, 20th century, male.

Born 1912, in Los Angeles; died 1992.

Painter, printmaker.

Neo-Dadaism, Fluxus.

John Cage is best known as an avant-garde composer and musician. As a member of the Fluxus group he took part in many of their happenings and was therefore at the heart of various artistic activities that extended into the visual arts. His introduction of the notion of chance into music coincided with the same approach in painting. He also used painting and print making as a means of expression and in Milan in ...

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 1884, in Naples; died 1977, in Livorno (Tuscany).

Poet, draughtsman, painter, watercolourist, sculptor.

Dadaism, Futurism.

Francesco Cangiullo was the elder brother of Pasquale Cangiullo. He participated in the Dada activities at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in around 1919. His friends Marinetti and Balla involved him in Futurist activities. He wrote theoretical works about Futurist theatre and became artistic director of the Compania del Teatro della Sorpresa. He was also a poet, and in ...

Russian, 20th century, male.

Active in France.

Born 4 August 1888 in Samara; died 24 November 1975, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), draughtsman. Still-lifes, landscapes.

Dadaism.

Dada groups in Berlin and Paris.

After a childhood spent in the western part of the Ural mountains in a small town on the banks of the Kinel, a tributary of the Volga, Serge Charchoune became a mediocre student and had no interest in succeeding his father who owned a fabric store. Wishing instead to devote his time to pictorial art, he entered a competition for admission to the school of fine arts in Kazan, which he failed. He left for Moscow in 1909 where he worked at several Academies, meeting Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov and Natalya Gontcharova. He also discovered the Impressionists at the Tretiakov Gallery, particularly Claude Monet. Opting for desertion rather than doing his military service, he fled to Berlin and then to Paris in 1912 where he attended the Académie de la Palette’s and was taught by Henri Le Fauconnier. Since he was not a naturalised Frenchman, he was not called up for military service when war was declared in 1914 and he left for Spain. He settled in Barcelona, where he met Francis Picabia, and came into contact with the Dada Movement (which had no direct influence on his pictorial art although it did influence his writings, particularly when he returned to France in 1920). Back in Paris he was an active member of the...

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 10 July 1888, in Volos (Thessaly); died 20 November 1978, in Rome.

Painter, illustrator, sculptor writer. Scenes with figures, portraits, nudes, animals, landscapes, flowers, still-lifes. Stage sets.

Dadaism, Surrealism, Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting).

Les Artistes Italiens de Paris.

Giorgio de Chirico’s father, Evaristo, was originally from Palermo, and his mother, Gemma, from Genoa. He was born in Thessaly in Greece, where his father worked as a railway engineer – one of those ‘19th-century European engineers, bearded and powerful’, as Giorgio later described him. This Mediterranean background was an important factor in Giorgio’s development, and classical order and the harsh light of Attica continued to influence his vision, as did his classical education....

Dutch, 20th century, male.

Born 15 December 1896, in Berlin; died 13 March 1983, in Wassenaar (The Hague).

Painter, collage artist, photomontage artist.

Dadaism, Constructivism.

Having studied at a school of painting and fine arts in Berlin, Paul Citroen abandoned painting in 1914 to become a bookseller. In ...

American, 20th century, male.

Born 24 January 1919, in New York; died 8 May 1996, in Miami (Florida).

Painter. Figures, scenes with figures.

Dadaism, Bad Painting.

William Nelson Copley studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1946 and then at the University of Yale. He took part in the Italy campaign as a soldier in the American army. At the same time as becoming a painter, between 1947 and 1948 he created the Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills where he exhibited the work of Man Ray, Max Ernst, Magritte, André Masson, Tanguy, Picabia and Duchamp, and held memorable parties spending the family inheritance and building up an impressive Surrealist collection. Between 1951 and 1964 he made frequent, long trips to Paris. He painted there and took part in several group exhibitions. After 1964 he lived and worked in New York and in Roxbury in Connecticut. He signed his work ...

Belgian, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1949, in Gosselies.

Painter, draughtsman, designer, sculptor, engraver.

Coppee trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. His works, some of which exhibit the hallmarks of a Dadaist approach, retain a naive spontaneity. He has also produced frescoes and stained glass windows....

Swiss, 20th century, male.

Active in France and from 1927 also naturalised there.

Born 24 April 1878, in Bulle (Fribourg); died 30 January 1958, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, sculptor. Designs for stained glass.

Dadaism.

Puteaux Group.

Jean Crotti first studied at the school of decorative arts in Munich, then on his arrival in Paris in 1901 he enrolled at the Académie Julian. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants from 1907 onwards and was a member of the board of the Salon d'Automne from 1909 to 1942. The works from his earliest youth were influenced by Impressionism and Fauvism. While he was in New York, from 1914 to 1916, he knew Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. On his return to Paris in 1916 he brought news of her brother to Suzanne Duchamp, whom he married in 1919. He had strong ties to the Puteaux Group, which revolved around the other brother, Jacques Villon. From 1915 to 1921, under the influence of Duchamp and Picabia, he was actively involved in the Dada movement. The works dating from this period include the ...

American, 20th century, male.

Born 1935, in Cincinnati.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, assemblage artist, happenings artist, draughtsman, lithographer, photographer.

Neo-Dadaism, Pop Art.

Jim Dine spent his childhood in his father’s painting and plumbing tool shop. He studied at the University of Cincinnati and then at Ohio University, leaving with a Bachelor of Arts in 1957. He also followed courses at Boston Museum School. In 1958 he settled in New York, participating in the birth of Pop Art and, more especially, Happening Art, participating in avant-garde group exhibitions. However, this allegiance to Pop Art has to be moderated to some extent; even though historically he lived this experience, he always added a somewhat poetic, sentimental nuance and retained an attachment to pictorial problems, something that brought him closer to another artist who found himself isolated during this period: Cy Twombly.

Influenced by Allan Kaprow, he took an interest in the environment, exhibiting in ...