Dada : Art and Anti-Art

As a member of the first Dada group in Zurich during the First World War, the author was in a unique position to tell its history. In this book, he draws together not only important historical documents but the testimonies of friends, such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Raoul Hausmann.

“Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer’s birthplace,” writes Hans Richter, the artist and filmmaker closely associated with this radical movement from its earliest days. Here he records and traces Dada’s history, from its inception in wartime Zurich to its collapse in Paris in the 1920s, when many of its members joined the Surrealist movement, to the present day when its spirit reemerged in the 1960s in movements such as Pop Art. This absorbing eyewitness narrative is enlivened by extensive use of Dada documents, illustrations, and texts by fellow Dadaists.To celebrate one hundred years of Dada, Thames & Hudson is reissuing this unique document exactly as it first appeared in an expanded centenary edition. This edition features a new introduction telling the story of how the book came about and an extended commentary that identifies Richter’s sources and brings the study up-to-date for a new generation of readers.