<P> Dada (/ ˈdɑːdɑː /) or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant - garde in the early 20th century, with early centers in Zürich, Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire (circa 1916); New York Dada began circa 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris . Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works . The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut - up writing, and sculpture . Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left . </P> <P> There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the Austrian artist Richard Huelsenbeck plunged a knife at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse . Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group . Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism . </P>

Who were the dadaists and what did they do
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