Overturned Blue Shoe with Two Heels Under a Black Vault c. 1925.
Dada or Dadaism is an art style founded in Zurich in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire.
Here, expatriate artists, poets, and writers, among them Jean Arps, gathered.
Dada started as an indictment against the values that were responsible for the horrors of the first world war.
Dadaism assumed many forms, including outrageous performances, festivals, readings, nonsensical chance-generated poetry and political satire. All of these activities were intended to challenge the established canons of art, thoughts and morality of the time.
Among the leading Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp (whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classic), George Grosz, Otto Dix, Hans Richter and Jean Arp. The movement had a strong influence on Pop Art, which was sometimes called neo-Dada.
The term Dada, nonsense or baby-talk term, symbolizes the loss of meaning in European culture.