Dada emerged during the First World War as an artistic movement in neutral Switzerland, with Zurich being its main canter.
Dada was developed as an anti-war protest and an outrage; therefore, one of its main goals was confronting the materialist and nationalist views that had caused it and were promoting military actions at the time.
The stylistic nature of this artistic movement combines vivid absurd images with wildly imaginative humor.
Through the use of these features, Dada artists tried to achieve their other goal: re-evaluate their nation’s traditions, rules, logical bases, existing biases, and various concepts, such as beauty and art itself.
Some of the leaders and initiators of the movement are Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, and Sophie Tauber; they were all associated with the performance space called Cabaret Voltaire.
The art shows at Cabaret Voltaire included spoken word, dance, and various other types of performance, all of which were quite experimental and at times, incomprehensible.
Dadaism rejected any expectations of artistic aesthetics, and while it was a visual art, among other things, it often relied on concepts, ideas, and manifestos more than on the aesthetic component or visual beauty.
Dada quickly became popular around the world: in America, it was represented by artists like Morton Schamberg and Man Ray; in Germany, these were artists like Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, and George Grosz (“The World Turned Upside Down: The Birth of Dada,” n.d.).
Apart from Western Europe, Dada also spread to Japan, Russia, and other countries.
While the movement did gain international popularity, it did not have any central hierarchy and eventually got disorganized.
This resulted in Dadaism morphing into various other artistic movements that used similar techniques and styles; the most famous of those came to be Surrealism.
Reference
The World Turned Upside Down: The Birth of Dada (n.d.) [Lecture Notes]