Dada, Politics, and Gender: Hannah Höch's Cut with the Kitchen Knife and George Grosz's Winter's Tale

This article explores the radical aesthetics and political critiques embedded in Berlin Dada through an in-depth analysis of Hannah Höch’s Cut with the Kitchen Knife and George Grosz’s Winter’s Tale. It situates both works within the sociopolitical upheaval of Weimar Germany, examining how fragmentation, satire, and photomontage became tools for visual resistance against nationalism, militarism, capitalism, and patriarchal norms. Höch’s photomontages interrogate gender roles and media representations, reclaiming space for the Neue Frau and critiquing ethnographic and colonial imagery. Grosz’s grotesque caricatures expose the moral decay of the bourgeoisie and the dystopian implications of modern urban life under capitalist and authoritarian systems. Drawing on feminist art historiography, theories of mechanization, and critiques of modern identity, the study reframes Berlin Dada as not merely anti-art but as a deeply engaged political practice. By reassessing the contributions of both artists, especially Höch’s marginalized feminist legacy, this research contributes to contemporary debates on art, resistance, and the rewriting of modernist histories.