Is Meret Oppenheim a dada artist?
Dadaism began in 1916 as an anti-art movement in Zurich, Switzerland and was a response to World War I. Oppenheim was born in 1913 and did not start formal art study until 1929. She quickly became known as the perfect embodiment of the Surrealist woman, the femme-enfant, who through her youth, naivety and charm was believed to have more direct and spontaneous access to the realms of the dream and the unconscious. She was celebrated by the Surrealists as the ‘fairy woman whom all men desire’. Man Ray posed her nude with an etching press in a celebrated series of photographs that includes Erotique voilée (1933). She first exhibited with the Surrealists in the Salon des Surindépendants in 1933, then participated in Surrealist meetings and exhibitions until 1937 and again, more sporadically, after World War II. So, Oppenheim was a surrealist, if she was anything at all.
