HELENE BAILLY is an art gallery in Paris that exhibits works from the Dada movement, featuring artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Max Ernst.

The Dadaists never aimed to define the Dada movement; the name itself, chosen at random, evokes a child’s wooden toy horse. Born in Zurich in 1916 around Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings at the Cabaret Voltaire, the Dada movement quickly brought together artists outraged by the absurdity of war.

In New York, Duchamp and Picabia led a parallel version of the movement.

After the war, Dada spread to Berlin with figures such as Huelsenbeck, Hausmann, Grosz, and Heartfield, carrying a strong spirit of social and political revolt.

The Dada Manifesto, written by Tristan Tzara and published in 1918, became a key reference. Through collage, ready-mades, performance, and appropriation, the Dadaists aimed to shock, to break conventions, and to denounce the established order. Their art was anarchic, absurd, and provocative, expressed through all media: painting, sculpture, poetry, theater, music, and more. Although the movement came to an end around 1922, it had a profound influence on the avant-garde.