FIRST INTERNATIONAL DADA-FAIR - SATURNALIA OF ART

Aug 24, 2026

The text examines the First International Dada-Fair in Berlin between July 1 and August 25, 1920, framing it as an experiential clash of Dionysian and Apollinian tensions. It reconstructs event timing from contemporary announcements and criticism, analyzes the fair’s international rhetoric against wartime patriotism, and explains how controversial, defaming works intensified public outrage and legal conflict. It also explores how the fair mimicked trade-show culture and parodied advertising, using “anti-mass” themes to dismantle religious and capitalist structures.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages144

Reading Time3 h 42 min

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First International Dada-Fair

Dates and public opening

Internationalism and political provocation

Trade-show framing and anti-art rhetoric

Anti-mass symbolism and revaluation of values

FIRST INTERNATIONAL DADA-FAIR 1920 FIRST INTERNATIONAL DADA-FAIR—SATURNALIA OF ART The First International Dada-Fair developed the complexity of the oppositional Dionysian and Apollinian poles into an experiential realm, revealing the “terrible and dubious character of existence”(Nietzsche) as a social and cultural grotesque. With this fair, Berlin became the focal point of Dadaism from July 1 to August 25, 1920. In the announcements the vernissage was on June 30 (Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, June 26, 1920) . According to the entrance ticket of the critic E. F. in Deutsche Tageszeitung of August 4, 1920, it opened on July 1, 1920, for the public. The Dadaists had announced diverging dates; possibly the opening was postponed several times. From the sticker of the Dada-Fair,1 we can assume it closed on August 25; this date approximately coincides with the period of the last critique by Kurt Bosdorff in Ostpreussische Zeitung (August 18, 1920) . As a “first” exhibition, one can assume that something new would be shown and that second and third events would follow: strength was demonstrated.“First” also means “best”: Berlin was supposed to become the center of international Dadaism, the fair its mirror and advertisement. The term “international” showed Dada’s thrust against the patriotism of the European nations at war; in this realm Dada was provocative whenever possible. Thus the trilingual titles for the portfolio by Grosz God With Us (fig. 79.1-79.9), published in 1920 by Malik-Verlag and exhibited at the Dada-Fair, strongly contributed to the public outrage at Grosz’s defamation of the German Reichswehr, as the lawsuit on April 20, 1921, would show. Already in the plan of an international Dadaist Weltatlas (world atlas), the Dadaco, which Huelsenbeck pursued from June 1919 to February 1920, the movement was to get a first summarizing documentation (fig. 165.1– 165.4) . But from the mostly German contributions to the fair in Berlin, it can be seen that it was somewhat euphoric in its claims. Only six artists (7%) with seventeen works (10%) came from foreign countries: Picabia (6) (France), Arp (5) and Serner (1) (Switzerland), Schmalhausen (4)(Belgium/Berlin), Hecht (2) (U.S.), Hans Citroën (4) (The Netherlands/Berlin) . The cosmopolitan element of Dada was contained both in its enthusiasm for the American lifestyle and in its demand for an “international, revolutionary unification of all creative and intellectual people of the whole world rooted in radical communism.”2 It can be traced back to an appeal made by the new Russian government printed in Die Pleite, no. 1 in January 1919, which suggested an assembly of German and Russian artists leading to a world-convention of all revolutionary artists. For Grosz, Heartfield, Herzfelde, and at times also Hausmann, international solidarity was an indispensable part of the Dada-Fair, even though the communist movement did not honor them as trusted combatants. They were judged to be bourgeois and decadent because of their nihilism, and the Dadaists themselves revolted against the communists’dogmatic, punctilious concept of art.3 The term “Dada-Fair” associates the art exhibit with a trade show, the quotation coming from the montage Universal-City (fig. 117), the title illustration of the catalog: the trade with Dada-Erzeugnisse (products) was supposed to be transnational. Dada pointed ironically to the numerous trade shows starting up after the war (Leipzig, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Offenbach, Dusseldorf, and others), entering the European net of Paris, London, Milan, Vienna, Basle, Gothenburg, and Moscow. The connection to trade show also critically pointed to the fact that capitalist interests did not stop before works of art. Dadaists offensively responded to this fact by having their Erzeugnisse refuse the criteria of the art market. “Dada will lead to the cancellation of the art trade,” the catalog of the Dada-Fair announced. Beyond that, it became an unmistakable chara

FAQs

When did the First International Dada-Fair take place in Berlin, 1920?

It took place in Berlin from July 1 to August 25, 1920, with announcements also noting a June 30 vernissage and an opening for the public on July 1.

Why did the fair’s “international” stance provoke public and political reactions?

“International” signaled Dada’s opposition to European wartime patriotism and its provocation, including works that defamed the German Reichswehr and triggered public outrage and later legal actions.

How did the Dada-Fair relate to trade shows and advertising?

It associated the exhibit with the trade-show logic of “Messe,” parodying advertising rhetoric and treating Dada products as transnational while critically pointing to capitalist interests in art.

Aug 24, 2026

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