Dada was launched in Zurich. Switzerland’s famed policy of neutrality made it a safe haven for European artists seeking to escape WWI. Many of these artists congregated at the short lived Cabaret Voltaire, named for the enlightenment philosopher famed for satirical critiques of church and government. Founded in 1916 by the German artist and poet Hugo Ball and his companion Emmy Hennings, the raucous nightclub flourished as a gathering spot for freethinking artists and intellectuals. The cabaret’s boisterous performances - often with a political edge- bordered at times on pandemonium. Ball described the evenings as a form of calculated irreverance, a protest against the culture of rationality that failed to prevent the war.
National Gallery of Art, 2006
