Dada: The Dada movement began in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, during the First World War. It can be seen as a reaction by artists to what they saw as the unprecedented horror and folly of the war. They felt it called into question every aspect, including its art, of the society capable of starting and then prolonging it. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old. As the artist Hans Arp later wrote: 'Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While the guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might.' The founder of Dada was a writer, Hugo Ball. In 1916 he started a satirical night-club in Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire, and a magazine which, wrote Ball, 'will bear the name 'Dada'. Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.' This was the first of many Dada publications. Dada became an international movement and eventually formed the basis of Surrealism in Paris after the war. Leading artists associated with it include Arp, Duchamp, Picabia and Schwitters. Duchamp's questioning of the fundamentals of Western art had a profound subsequent influence. (Source: Tate Gallery)
De Stijl: Name of journal founded in 1917 in Holland by pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Means style in Dutch. The name De Stijl also came to refer to the circle of artists that gathered around the publication. De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian's ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year's issues he defined his aims and used, perhaps for the first time, the term Neo-Plasticism. This became the name for the type of abstract art he and the De Stijl circle practised. It was based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals. Other members of the group included Bart van der Leck, Vantongerloo and Vordemberge-Gildewart, as well as the architects Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud. Mondrian withdrew from De Stijl in 1923 following Van Doesburg's adoption of diagonal elements in his work. Van Doesburg continued the publication until 1931. De Stijl had a profound influence on the development both of abstract art and modern architecture and design.
Die Brücke: Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists, founded in Dresden in 1905, whose work marked the beginning of modern art in Germany. The principal members were the architectural student Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in whose studio they regularly gathered, and his friends Erich Heckel, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and, later, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein. Rejecting academic tradition, realism, and impressionism, they drew inspiration from German medieval and Renaissance art, art nouveau, primitive art, and the French postimpressionists van Gogh, Gauguin, and the fauves. Their name symbolized their bridge of common interests and their link to the future. Most of Die Brücke were untrained in art, but the harsh colors and distorted shapes in their work successfully expressed their strong feelings and vivid imaginations. The dramatic contrasts of black and white in their woodcuts, a medium they revived, were especially effective. The group moved to Berlin in 1910 and disbanded in controversy in 1913.
Dry-point: In drypoint, the artist "draws" directly on a copper plate with a sharp stylus. No etching is involved. The point of the stylus creates a "burr" of copper on either side as it is scored through the metal. In the printing process, the burr holds additional ink, giving the finished print a velvety richness unique to this method.