Auto-destructive art
art movement started in the 1960s
Auto-destructive art (ADA) is a form of art invented by Gustav Metzger, an artist born in Bavaria who moved to Britain in 1939. Taking place after World War II, Metzger wanted to showcase the destruction created from the war through his artwork. This movement took place in England and was launched by Metzger in 1959. This term was invented in the early 1960s and put into circulation by his article "Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art" in the summer 1962 issue of the journal Ark.
History
This movement sparked after World War I. After World War I, artists began to introduce new styles of art that used different medias and techniques. Cubism and Dadaism were at the heart of these new techniques. Auto-Destructive Art follows these newer techniques by taking everyday objects and causing damage. Destructive art is similar to Dadaism in the way it rejects past concepts in order to not only redefine art, but also to bring light to issues. Although similar to Dadaism, ADA was a movement of its own due to the style and time period. After World War II, many artists turned to Abstract Expressionism, but ADA differed with its focus on destruction.
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This entry incorporates text from “Auto-destructive art” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.