Switzerland, Dada and 100 years of Surrealism

Three museums in Lausanne are celebrating the centenary of Surrealism. But why did Dada, the influential art movement and precursor of Surrealism, all but disappear from Switzerland after it was launched in Zurich in 1916? In an interview with SWI swissinfo.ch, curator Juri Steiner sets the record straight. The Dada art movement was born from the disillusionment of avant-garde artists who found refuge in Switzerland during the First World War. Gathering at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, these pacifists and deserters denounced what curator Juri Steiner calls the “bankruptcy of rationality” by means of the absurd. This came in the form of poetry, collages, songs, performances and paintings. The spirit of Dada rapidly spread to Europe and the United States and became the prelude to Surrealism, which was launched in Paris by a 1924 manifesto by André Breton. But in Switzerland Dada quietly disappeared. The iconic Cabaret Voltaire languished for decades as a pub cum dance club, where ...