ABSTRACT
The techniques of photomontage were inspired by a growing culture of mass-produced images that accompanied the machine-age technologies of the First World War. The Berlin Dadaists quickly saw the subversive potential of manipulating pictures. Although photomontage is now one of the commonplaces of advertising, it continues to have combative exponents. The invention of photomontage among the Berlin Dadaists has been claimed on the one hand by Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch, and on the other by George Grosz and John Heartfield. Of the Berlin Dada Club, which included Huelsenbeck, Hausmann, Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde and his brother John Heartfield, Hannah Hoch, Johannes Baader and, briefly, Franz Jung, only Herzfelde and Heartfield were founder members of the German Communist Party in 1918. The first International Dada Fair, held in Berlin in 1920, included works by the Arp, Picabia and Ernst as well as by the Berlin group.
