1909

February F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944) publishes ‘Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo’ (The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism) in Bologna. The manifesto is published in translation later in the month in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro and is disseminated throughout continental Europe – notably in Romania (‘Dada East’), in the newspaper Democraţia in Craiova, and a few days later in the journal Biblioteca modernă in Bucharest.

1910–11

Hans Arp (1886–1966) is a founding member of Der Moderne Bund (The Modern Association) of artists in Weggis, Switzerland, and develops a friendship with Paul Klee (1879–1940). The second exhibition by Der Moderne Bund in the summer of 1911 is held in Zurich, featuring works by Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) artists, including Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944).

1912

March Kandinsky invites Arp to join Der Blaue Reiter in Munich, where Arp exhibits alongside prominent members of the group.

May Publication of Der Blaue Reiter almanac, on which Arp has collaborated via his involvement with the Munich group.

June–August Rudolf von Laban (1879–1958) establishes the summer dance farms that are held in Ascona, in the south of Switzerland, until the outbreak of the First World War.

September In Munich, Hugo Ball (1886–1927), a recent philosophy student and reader of Nietzsche at the city university, first meets Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974). In this year also, Ball meets Kandinsky in Munich, the year of Kandinsky's publishing his manifesto Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art). Ball debates with members of Der Blaue Reiter the idea of manifesting a Gesamtkunstwerk in the form of a revolutionary artists’ theatre.

October Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) and Marcel Janco (1895–1984) are among a youthful group in Bucharest who found the literary journal Simbolul.

1913

March Luigi Russolo (1883–1947) completes his Italian Futurist manifesto ‘L'arte dei rumori’ (The Art of Noises).

June Mary Wigman (1886–1973) joins Laban's dance farm at Ascona, to become his pupil, disciple and eventual collaborator.

October Ball meets poet and cabaret performer Emmy Hennings (1885–1948) at the tingeltangel Café Simplicissimus in Munich, to embark on a lifelong relationship of rocky devotion; it is in this year that Hennings publishes Die letzte Freude (The Last Joy), her first volume of poetry, in Leipzig.