Dada + Surrealism: c. 1913 – 1920

Dada was an anti-art movement that sought to subvert the function of the arts in an increasingly commercial and militaristic society. Dada develops in numerous cities including Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and New York in the context WWI. Influenced by ideas of psychoanalysis such as the unconscious, artists built on the irrational art of Dada to explore the dark world of desire freed from rules created to protect us from our inner ourselves.