ABCD

Raoul Hausmann (1886 - 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. Moving to Berlin in 1901, he soon became one of the key figures in the Dada Movement. His experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques influenced the European Avant-Garde greatly in the aftermath of World War I. In 1918, whilst holidaying on the Baltic Sea, Hausmann was inspired by a picture in a guest room. The patron had glued photographic heads of his son onto a generic portrait of five soldiers. Hausmann, speaking in 1958 states that "It was like a thunderbolt; one could - I saw it instantaneously - make pictures, assembled entirely from cut-up photographs. Back in Berlin that September, I began to realise this new vision, and I made use of photographs from the press and the cinema."

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This "photomontage" subsequently became the technique most associated with Berlin Dada, and was used extensively by Hausmann himself, as well as his contemporaries Hoch, Heartfield, Baader and Grosz. Additionally, he became a crucial influence on Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitsky and Russian Constructivism.

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ABCD (1923-1924)