The dada movement began in 1916 and flourished in western Europe through 1923.  It proclaimed to seek authentic reality through the abolition of traditional culture and aesthetic forms.  The artists of the dada group worked in various mediums, creating theatre, dance, and music performances with elaborate stage settings and costumes, as well as paintings, sculptures, drawings, and collages.

The first dada group formed in Zürich at Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball's Cabaret Voltaire in 1916.  Other artists immediately joined these two performers--namely, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Richard Hülsenbeck, Marcel Janco, etc.  These anti-aesthetic, anti-bourgeois artists and war protesters, in turn, spread the spirit of dada wherever they went: eventually, dada groups formed in Berlin, Köln, Hannover, Paris, Madrid, and New York during the early years of the 20th century.
 
 

Raoul Hausmann's  "Mechanical Head"