Local Context • 1911
The Mines and Works Act legislates the reservation of skilled positions on the mines for white workers.

Global Art • 1911 • I
The Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group of avant-garde artists is founded in Munich and will continue until 1914. Future Dadaist Hans Arp exhibits with the group in 1912.

Global Art • 1911 • II
Kandinsky publishes Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he locates the origins of abstraction in mysticism.

Local Context • 1912
The African National Congress (ANC, then the South African Native National Convention) is formed in Bloemfontein.

Local Art • 1912
An art school opens in the Johannesburg Library (later the Johannesburg School of Art).

Global Art • 1912 • I
Herwarth Walden holds an inaugural exhibition of the Italian Futurist group at his Sturm gallery. The exhibition shows in Paris, London and Berlin.

Global Art • 1912 • II
Futurists perform and exhibit throughout Europe from 1912–1914.

Local Context • 1913 • I
The Natives' Land Act limits ownership of land by non-white South Africans to 'reserves' which make up just under 7% of the country.

Local Context • 1913 • II
Women in the Orange Free State effectively protest against the extension of the existing pass laws to African women.

Local Context • 1913 • III
African Mirror, South Africa's first newsreel, is screened for the first time.

Global Art • 1913
Poet Guillaume Apollinaire publishes The Cubist Painters.

Dada • 1913 • I
Marcel Duchamp creates one of his first assisted readymades when he attaches a bicycle wheel to a stool.

Dada • 1913 • II
Future New York Dadaist Elsa Plötz moves to New York and marries a German aristocrat, becoming Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

Dada • 1913 • III
The International Exposition of Modern Art (aka the Armory Show) is held in New York. Nude Descending a Staircase by Duchamp creates a public sensation. Theodore Roosevelt labels the Futurist and Cubist artists in the exhibition "the lunatic fringe."

Local Context • 1914 • I
At the outset of WWI, the SAP-dominated parliament votes to support Britain rather than Germany – JBM Hertzog leaves the SAP and forms the National Party.

Local Context • 1914 • II
William Foster leads the Foster gang in a spate of murders and robberies across Johannesburg. He becomes an infamous cultural figure.

Global Context • 1914 • I
World War One begins in August after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914) and his wife in Sarajevo. Britain declares war on Germany.

Global Context • 1914 • II
Charlie Chaplin makes his screen debut in the Mack Sennet film Making a Living.

Global Context • 1915 • I
The Ku Klux Klan is revived in Georgia, USA, adding anti-Catholicism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism to its white supremacist platform.

Global Context • 1915 • II
DW Griffith's (1875–1948) Birth of a Nation, a romantic depiction of Klansmen as heroic saviours of the South, premieres in the US and sparks riots in several cities.

Dada • 1915 • I
After arriving in Zürich, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings begin performing in the cabaret act Maxim. Suggestions from friends to start their own act lead Ball to share his plan to start an 'Artists' Pub' similar to Simplizzimus, the couple's principal venue in Munich, but more artistic and with a clearer purpose.

Dada • 1915 • II
Man Ray publishes The Ridgefield Gazook in the US, a four-page, hand-drawn newsletter consisting of nonsense graphics, puns and illustrations. Only a single number (Number 0) appears.

Dada • 1915 • III
Marcel Duchamp leaves France for New York. On his arrival, he meets influential collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg, and later, Man Ray.

Local Context • 1916 • I
SA Native College (later Fort Hare University) opens.

Local Context • 1916 • II
De Voortrekkers: Winning of a Continent, the first Afrikaans sound flim is produced.

Local Context • 1916 • III
Sol Tshekiso Plaatje publishes his book, Native Life in South Africa.

Global Context • 1916 • I
Sigmund Freud begins to publish his introductory lectures on psychoanalysis.

Global Context • 1916 • II
Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity.

Global Context • 1916 • III
The boxer-poet Arthur Cravan (whose other listed occupations include forger, critic, sailor, thief, chauffeur, editor, professor and dandy) challenges the legendary US heavyweight champion Jack Johnson to a boxing match in Barcelona. Cravan loses dismally, the press speculates later that the fight was organised in favour of the 50 000 francs that Cravan won after betting against himself. Cravan leaves Barcelona for New York shortly afterwards, travelling on the same transatlantic liner as Leon Trotsky who wrote of "meeting a boxer, occasional literary hack and cousin of Oscar Wilde's, [who] admitted frankly that he would rather demolish the jaws of Yankee gentlemen in a noble sport than have his ribs broken by a German."

Dada • 1916 • I
On February 5, 1916, the Cabaret Voltaire opens in the Neiderdorf quarter, a "slightly disreputable" entertainment district. An advertisement placed in the local newspaper invites "the young artists of Zürich, whatever their orientation...to come along with suggestions and contributions of all kinds". Ball and Hennings, together with Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara, soon coalesce as the original ensemble. On Ball's request, writer Richard Huelsenbeck joins them from Berlin soon after. Though the Cabaret remains open for just over five months, closing down in early July, it provides a focused space for the explosion of energy and ideas that instigate the Dada movement. Tzara provides the first explanation of Dada in Vol. 1 of the Collection Dada in July; "Dada is our intensity...it's shit after all but from now on we intend to shit in assorted colours and bedeck the zoo of art with the flags of every consulate..."

Dada • 1916 • II
Richard Huelsenbeck publishes two further volumes of Collection Dada, Phantastiche Gebete (Fantastic Prayers) and Schlalaben schalomal schalamezonai.

Dada • 1916 • III
Tzara publishes commentary and reproductions of various African and Oceanic poetry that he finds during his research in the Zürich library.

Dada • 1916 • IV
In an interview for the Evening World in New York, Marcel Duchamp publicly discusses his idea of the 'readymade' for the first time.

Local Context • 1917
636 die when the SS Mendi sinks off the coast of England. 609 of the drowned are black South African volunteers of the South African Native Labour Corps bound for France to assist the Allies in the WWI conflict.

Local Art • 1917
11-year-old Walter Battiss is shown his first rock engravings by William Fowler, near Koffiefontein.

Global Art • 1917 • I
The Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting) movement is begun by painters Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà amongst others.

Global Art • 1917 • II
Dutch painter Theo van Doesburg is among the founders of the journal De Stijl, the principal organ of the movement of the same name. Its publication continues through 1918.

Global Context • 1917 • I
The first commercial jazz recording, Livery Stable Blues, is made in the US in New Orleans by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Neither African-American nor original, the group nonetheless brings jazz to a national audience and launches a craze for the music.

Global Context • 1917 • II
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returns to St Petersburg (formerly Petrograd) after a period of exile in Zürich, Switzerland.

Global Context • 1917 • III
Russian Tsar abdicates and the Bolsheviks take power from provincial government in an almost bloodless coup in October.

Dada • 1917 • I
In Zürich, the first Exposition Dada opens at Hans Corray's Galerie Corray in January. In March, Galerie Dada opens in Corray's space. The first and second issues of the Dada journal appear, edited by Tristan Tzara.

Dada • 1917 • II
Hugo Ball breaks definitively with Dada in May.

Dada • 1917 • III
Having returned to Germany from Zürich to study medicine, Huelsenbeck moves to Berlin and meets Franz Jung and Raoul Hausmann, sharing news of the Dadaist activities in Zürich.

Dada • 1917 • IV
Neue Jugend publishing becomes Malik Verlag, run by Wieland Herzfelde and his brother John Heartfield, together with George Grosz. Malik is concerned with the dissemination of radical leftist art and literature. Their journal, Neue Jugend (launched the previous year), is shut down by government censors in June – two further issues appear in defiance.

Dada • 1917 • V
In January, Francis Picabia founds the magazine 391 in Barcelona.

Dada • 1917 • VI
In New York, Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood publish the first issue of The Blind Man. The journal announces the birth of independent art in America and the upcoming exhibition of Independent Artists. Duchamp submits a porcelain urinal under a false name (R Mutt) to the exhibition, testing the limits of the Independent Artists' 'no jury, no prize' principle. The work is rejected and Duchamp, Arensberg and Alfred Stieglitz (who are on the committee) resign in protest. Duchamp's seemingly simple provocation provides a landmark for future avant-garde practices.

Dada • 1917 • VII
The editorial team of The Blind Man holds 'The Blind Man's Ball'. Advertised as a "new-fashioned hop, skip and jump" at the "prehistoric, ultra-bohemian Webster Hall," the riotous costumed ball lasts well into the night, with Beatrice Wood dancing "continuous syncopations" and Duchamp climbing a flagpole.

Dada • 1917 • VIII
Picabia announces a New York lecture by Arthur Cravan in 391. On the day, Cravan arrives late and proceeds to undress in front of his astonished and protesting audience. He is subsequently carried away by the police. Duchamp, who was in attendance, comments later that day, "what a wonderful lecture!"

Local Context • 1918 • I
The Broederbond, a secret Afrikaans organisation that aims to end British dominance, is formed.

Local Context • 1918 • II
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is born in the Thembu village of Mvezo, near Umtata (now Mthatha) in the Transkei.

Local Art • 1918
The Eastern Province Society of Arts & Crafts is formed.

Global Art • 1918 • I
Allied with the radical socialism of the November Revolution and its ideals, artists and architects form the Novembergruppe (November Group) and the Arbeitsrat für Kunts (Workers' Council for Art) in Berlin. Their programmes for state support of art and other projects pre-empt the agenda of the Bauhaus, formed the following year.

Global Art • 1918 • II
German artist Christian Schad creates his first 'Schadograph', a camera-less photography that reproduces the negative image of textures placed on photosensitive paper.

Global Art • 1918 • III
Guillaume Apollinaire publishes Calligrammes, featuring his 'shaped' poems written throughout the war. Apollinaire dies in November of influenza accelerated by a head wound sustained at the front in 1916. Heavily influenced and indebted by his playful dismantling of grammar and syntax, the Dadaists mourn him in Paris and Zürich.

Global Context • 1918 • I
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Germany surrenders and an armistice brings World War I to an end.

Global Context • 1918 • II
In Germany, the November Revolution is triggered by a mutiny of sailors in Kiel who set up Soviet-style workers' councils. The Kaiser abdicates and the Social-Democratic Party heads the new government, fracturing left unity by allying with conservative forces.

Global Context • 1918 • III
German soldiers returning from the front, impoverished and disconnected from civilian life, turn to the paramilitary organisation of the Freikorps. Supported controversially by the Weimar government, the Freikorps direct their aggression primarily towards Communist sympathisers and Spartacist supporters.

Global Context • 1918 • IV
Germany extends voting power to women following the armistice (America does so in 1920, South Africa in 1930, France does only in 1944, and Switzerland only in 1971).

Dada • 1918 • I
Tristan Tzara read his 1918 Dada Manifesto.

Dada • 1918 • II
A Freudian-inspired adaptation of the play II re Cervo (King Stag) by the 18th-century Venetian satirist Carlo Gozzi opens at the Swiss Marionette Theatre in Zürich. Sophie Taeuber constructs the sets and marionettes for the various characters, including Dr. Oedipus Complex and the Ur-Libido Fairy.

Dada • 1918 • III
In Berlin, Richard Huelsenbeck presents his First Dada Speech in Germany during a soirée in Berlin. A newspaper review mockingly titled 'O Burrubuh hibi o burruhbuh hihi o hojojojolodomodoho' provides the first public announcement of the formation of Club Dada.

Dada • 1918 • IV
Club members the Dadasopher (Raoul Hausmann) and the Superdada (Johannes Baader) write press releases that feature in the local news ('The Dadaists demand the Nobel Peace Prize!', 'Men are angels and live in heaven') and form an imaginary Dada Republic at Nicolassee. Baader also publishes his Acht Weltsätze (Eight World Theorems), each of which is tailored to 'solve' a category of the Nobel Prize (chemistry, physics, literature, medicine, and peace). He cheerily proposes that he receive all the awards. Later in the year, Baader disrupts a pastor at the Berlin Cathedral, shouting, "You are making a mockery of Christ."

Dada • 1918 • V
Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann discuss the tactical virtues of photomontage, while Höch also publishes a series of articles on the artistic legitimacy of embroidery and its inherent abstraction. Hausmann publishes his Material of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which appears as the third Club Dada publication.

Dada • 1918 • VI
Kurt Schwitters has his first show in Berlin at Hewarth Walden's Sturm gallery. He later meets Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch and Hans Arp, all of whom remain life-long friends.

Dada • 1918 • VII
Arthur Cravan mysteriously disappears, assumed to be lost at sea on a 'frail craft' in the Gulf of Mexico.

Global Art • 1919
The Weimar Bauhaus is founded in Germany by Walter Gropius.

Global Context • 1919 • I
Street battles between supporters of the communist Spartacists' Union and right-wing military leadership defendants like the Freikorps dominate major German cities.

Global Context • 1919 • II
In January, the Communist leaders Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht are assassinated by Freikorps. Rosa Luxembourg, quoting Friedrich Engels in 1906: "Capitalist society faces a dilemma: either an advance of socialism, or a reversion to barbarism." The communist revolt is ultimately suppressed and the Weimar Republic is proclaimed.

Global Context • 1919 • III
The Weimar government in Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles. The harsh terms of the treaty are bitterly resented by the German constituency and lead the country into economic collapse.

Global Context • 1919 • IV
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) joins the German Worker's Party and soon becomes one of its leaders. The party evolves into the National Socialist German Worker's Party (abbreviated to Nazis) and adopts the swastika as its emblem. The first Pan-African Congress, organised by WEB du Bois (1868–1963), opens in Paris with fifty-seven delegates from sixteen countries and colonies.

Global Context • 1919 • V
Thousands of anarchists, socialists, communists, and union organisers are rounded up in the 'Red Scare' Palmer Raids in the US; hundreds are deported, others jailed.

Dada • 1919 • I
In Berlin, critic and political activist Carl Einstein and George Grosz team up to edit the 'satirical weekly' Der Blutige Ernst (The Bloody Truth). It appears in six issues (far less than weekly) until February 1920, when it is hounded out of existence by censors.

Dada • 1919 • II
Richard Huelsenbeck turns down Kurt Schwitters' request to join the Berlin Club Dada; Schwitters creates Merz. Resisting a clear definition or manifesto, he describes Merz through his practice. In 1920 he explains that "Merz aims for freedom of anything that stands in the way of forming artistically."

Dada • 1919 • III
Schwitters creates his largest assemblage to date, Das Arbeiterbild (The Worker Picture). The title alludes to the Freikorps massacre of early May.

Dada • 1919 • IV
Paul Steegemann publishes Schwitters' poem An Anna Blume in Hanover.

Dada • 1919 • V
Der Ventilator, a pro-Marxist weekly that the British occupying forces ban after its sixth issue, is published in Cologne, Germany, by Max Ernst and Johannes Baargeld (the pseudonym of Alfred F Gruenwald) with Heinrich and Angelika Hoerle.

Dada • 1919 • VI
On the invitation of Francis Picabia and André Breton, Tristan Tzara leaves Zürich for Paris.

Local Art • 1920
The Durban Art Gallery is established after Colonel RH Whitwell donates his collection of 400 pieces, including British, French and Dutch works.

Global Art • 1920 • I
Erwin Piscator opens the Proletarian Theatre in Berlin. Pioneering the use of mechanised sets and films in his dramatic productions, Piscator envisions an agitational, propagandistic theatre whose sociopolitical context supersedes emotive content or aesthetics.

Global Art • 1920 • II
German-born choreographer Mary Wigman, creator of Expressionist dance, opens a school in Dresden. Employing spontaneous movement, repetitive pattern and choreography without music, Wigman's innovations will influence European and American modern dance for decades.

Global Context • 1920 • I
Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922) devises the 'inkblot' test.

Global Context • 1920 • II
American women are granted the right to vote.

Global Context • 1920 • III
In spite of the rising intolerance of white Americans towards immigrants and foreigners, literary, visual and performing arts flourish in Harlem, the African-American enclave of New York City.

Dada • 1920 • I
Baader, Hausmann and Huelsenbeck mount a six-week Dada Tour throughout eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia. Their programme includes speeches and 'primitivist' verse accompanied with drumming by Huelsenbeck and the most popular Dada Trot (Sixty One Step) by Hausmann. The tour solicits nervous commentary from the press.

Dada • 1920 • II
Grosz and Heartfield attack painter Oskar Kokoschka as a 'Kunstlump' after he laments damage caused to his paintings during the political uprisings in Berlin: "We are overjoyed," Heartfield and Grosz write, "that the bullets are whistling into galleries and palaces rather than the houses of the poor."

Dada • 1920 • III
The Berlin Dadaists organise The First International Dada Fair (Dada-Messe) in June.

Dada • 1920 • IV
Theo van Doesburg visits Berlin and the newly established Weimar Bauhaus.

Dada • 1920 • V
After their rejection by the Cologne Spring Salon (despite its 'jury-free' policy), the Dadaists grouped in Cologne organise a Dada-Vorfrühling (Dada Early Spring) exhibition in April. Joined by Hans Arp and Francis Picabia, the exhibition takes place in the backyard of a building that can only be accessed through a men's lavatory. The exhibition is shut down by the police on charges of obscenity. In May, a poster exclaiming "Dada will win! ... Dada is for peace and order!" reopens the exhibition.

Dada • 1920 • VI
In Paris, the Dadaists organise and host the Dada Festival at the Salle Gaveau in May. Advertised by men wearing sandwich boards, the programme includes Tzara's Vaseline Symphonique, a poem for twenty people, a 'sodomist composition' by Francis Picabia titled The American Wet Nurse (La Nourrice Americaine), and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes as 'the bellybutton interloper'.

Dada • 1920 • VII
Duchamp, Katherine Dreier and Man Ray open the Société Anonyme. The inaugural exhibition at the Société's headquarters features works by Picabia, Man Ray, Ribemont-Dessaignes and Duchamp. In November, the Société hosts a solo exhibition by Kurt Schwitters.

Dada • 1920 • VIII
The concurring events of the various Dada uprisings in 1920 lead to an unparalleled international recognition of Dada.

Local Context • 1921 • I
The Communist Party of South Africa is formed in Cape Town.

Local Context • 1921 • II
The Imperial Conference begins in London. India demands the granting of full citizenship rights to Indians in South Africa and other British colonies. General JC Smuts maintains that he cannot grant the franchise to Indians while withholding it from black South Africans.

Local Context • 1921 • III
The Bulhoek massacre follows a year's worth of attempts by the local authorities, the ANC and others to convince the Israelites (religious followers of self-proclaimed prophet Enoch Mgijima) to leave their camp in Bulhoek on British-owned land.

Global Art • 1921
In Germany in 1921, artists from the left wing of the November Group called for an end to the "bourgeois development' of the artists. The declaration was signed by Otto Dix, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Rudolf Schlichter and Georg Scholz.

Global Context • 1921
In July, Adolf Hitler is introduced as Führer of the Nazi Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used.

Dada • 1921 • I
The leading organisers of the Dada Fair stand trial for slandering and defaming the army. Particularly offended by Heartfield and Schlichter's Prussian Archangel, the authorities fine the gallerist Otto Buchard and charge Schlichter, Grosz and Heartfield with an "affront to the armed forces of the Reich," demanding a six-week imprisonment. Sentencing is lenient, partly because the accused humbled themselves in their defence. Socialist critic Kurt Tucholsky comments that "the trial dilutes blood to lemonade. If Grosz didn't mean it like that, we did."

Dada • 1921 • II
In Paris, André Breton convenes the mock trial of Maurice Barrès – an author of the time who had become a mouthpiece for ultra-nationalist views. The trial divides opinions amongst the Paris Dada group. Picabia leaves early and Tristan Tzara comments that he has no confidence in justice, even if it is done by Dada. "You will agree with me, your Honour," he directed at Breton, "that we are all just a bunch of bastards and that, as a result, little differences between big bastards and smaller bastards are of no importance."

Dada • 1921 • III
The Société Anonyme in New York holds an April Fool's Day symposium with the theme 'What is Dadaism?' One disgusted reviewer comments in American Art News that "the Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralysing and most destructive thing that has ever originated in the brain of man..."

Dada • 1921 • IV
The single-issue publication, New York Dada, is issued in New York. The publication features a cover image of Duchamp's Belle Haleine Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water) and a mock 'authorisation' of New York Dada by Tristan Tzara that states: "You ask for authorisation to name your periodical Dada. But Dada belongs to everybody."

Dada • 1921 • V
The back page of New York Dada features cropped photographs of Baroness Elsa, bare-breasted and adorned with cannibal headgear.

Dada • 1921 • VI
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray move from New York to Paris.

Dada • 1921 • VII
Shortly after his arrival in Paris, Man Ray has an exhibition at the Librairie Six run by Paris Dadaist Philippe Soupault. Amongst other things, he exhibits his assisted readymade, Cadeau (Gift).

Local Context • 1922
White mine workers in Johannesburg strike against the employment of black labourers in positions formerly reserved for whites. The strike is crushed by the government and more embittered white workers lose their jobs.

Local Art • 1922
The 21st Annual Exhibition of the South African Society of Artists is held in Cape Town.

Global Art • 1922
Naum Gabo brings Constructivism from his native Russia to Germany, where he lives until 1932.

Global Context • 1922 • I
Mussolini comes to power and establishes a totalitarian state in Italy.

Global Context • 1922 • II
Irish author James Joyce publishes Ulysses.

Dada • 1922 • I
After spending nine months in Berlin, the Japanese artist Murayama founds the Mavo group and journal in Tokyo.

Dada • 1922 • II
In Paris, Breton begins planning his Congress to Determine the Aims and Defenses of the Modern Spirit; a somewhat contemptuous attempt to merge the divergent avant-garde practices of the time into one unified movement, led by Breton himself. Tzara is invited to join the committee, but declines. Breton responds with a derogatory letter about Tzara that is printed in Comœdia.

Dada • 1922 • III
Man Ray experiments increasingly with photography and creates his first 'Rayograms'.

Dada • 1922 • IV
Theo van Doesburg releases the first of four issues of Mécano.

Dada • 1922 • V
In September, a Constructivist Congress in Weimar is attended by El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, van Doesburg and Schwitters, as well as the Dadaists Arp, Taeuber and Tzara.

Global Art • 1923
The Romanian-born sculptor and close friend of Marcel Duchamp Constantin Brâcuși enters his notorious Princess X sculpture into the annual Salon des Indépendents exhibition in Paris. The sculpture's suggestive form scandalises the Salon and is removed from the exhibition despite Brâcuși's explanation of it as an anonymous portrait.

Global Context • 1923
Adolf Hitler makes his first attempt to seize power in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. During a brief imprisonment for treason, he writes Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The value of the German mark drops dramatically and the ensuing economic instability contributes to the popularity of the Nazi party, which Hitler reorganises in 1925.

Dada • 1923 • I
Tristan Tzara and Iliazd orchestrate La soirée du coeur à barbe (The bearded heart soirée) in Paris. The programme promises screenings of several short films by Hans Richter, Man Ray and others, musical performances by Igor Stravinsky and Erik Satie with Tzara's play Lec Coeur à gaz as the centrepiece. In a dramatic and final break between the Paris Dadaists and the future surrealists, Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard and others storm the stage mid-performance, and the soirée ends in turmoil.

Dada • 1923 • II
Kurt Schwitters begins work on his first Merzbau in Hanover, transforming his family home into an immersive and collaborative installation. It is destroyed in 1943 by the Allied bombardments of WWII.

Local Context • 1924 • I
The Pact government is formed after the NP forms a coalition with the Labour Party and wins the general election.

Local Context • 1924 • II
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) is formed under the guidance of Leo Marquard. Students from the 'native' college at Fort Hare are admitted in 1945 as members, confirming the commitment to non-racialism after a period of indecision.

Global Art • 1924 • I
André Breton issues his first Surrealist manifesto in France.

Global Art • 1924 • II
In Paris, Francis Picabia and the composer Erik Satie collaborate on Relâche (No Performance, or Cancelled). Entr'acte, a short film by René Clair that features Satie, Picabia, Duchamp, Man Ray and other well-known artists as actors, is screened during intermission. A repeat performance is held on New Year's Eve, titled Cinésketch. Duchamp and Borgna Perlmutter appear briefly as Adam and Eve.

Dada • 1924
Tristan Tzara releases his Seven Dada Manifestoes, an anthology of his major Dada speeches and writings. In the preface of a later edition for the book, Tzara writes that the writings do not "pretend to bring solutions to problems that they seem barely to have formulated."

Local Context • 1925 • I
Afrikaans is recognised as an official language.

Local Context • 1925 • II
Eugène Marais publishes Die Siel van die Mier (The Soul of the Ant). Much of the text is plagiarised by Belgian Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published The Life of the White Ant in 1926, falsely claiming many of Marais' revolutionary ideas as his own.

Global Art • 1925
Selective works that use stark realism to convey the sense of disillusionment that racked Germany throughout the twenties, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub curates the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition in Mannheim, Germany. The show includes works by George Grosz, Otto Dix and Christian Schad, amongst others.

Local Context • 1926 • I
The South African Indian community heads a call for strikes in opposition to proposed anti-Indian legislation on a national scale.

Local Context • 1926 • II
The Immorality Act No. 5 is passed by parliament, effectively outlawing extra-marital intercourse between blacks and whites. The act is extended in 1950 to include coloureds and Asians.

Global Art • 1926
The Bauhaus school building, designed by Walter Gropius (1883–1969), is completed in Dessau, Germany. It will relocate to Berlin in 1932, closing its doors in 1933 as a result of Hitler's anti-modernist stance.

Local Context • 1927
The new South African flag replaces the Union Jack.

Global Art • 1928
Belgian painter René Magritte (1898–1967) creates The Treachery of Images, a painting of a pipe bearing the caption Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe).

Global Context • 1928
Joseph Stalin assumes control of the Communist Party in Russia.

Local Context • 1929 • I
General Barry Hertzog campaigns for votes under the banner of the Black Manifesto in which the Swart Gevaar (black danger) is made the central issue.

Local Context • 1929 • II
The NP abandons the Labour Party and wins the general election.

Local Context • 1929 • III
The Federasie van Afrikaans Kultuurvereniging (Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Unification, FAK) is formed to promote Afrikaans cultural activities.

Global Art • 1929 • I
The Deutscher Werkbund organises the groundbreaking Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, an international showcase for avant-garde photography and film.

Global Art • 1929 • II
The Museum of Modern Art, New York opens in the US.

Global Context • 1929
The economic boom of the early 1920s grinds to a halt when the US stock market crashes on October 24 (Black Thursday), triggering a worldwide economic collapse (the Great Depression) that will last until the beginning of World War II.

Local Context • 1930 • I
Mhudi, a historical novel about the Baralong Uprising of 1830 by Sol Plaatje, is published in South Africa.

Local Context • 1930 • II
White women in South Africa get the vote.

Local Context • 1930 • III
Minister of Justice Oswald Pirow pilots the Riotous Assemblies (Amendment) Bill through parliament, enabling the forced exile of persons seen to be creating hostility between the races.

Global Art • 1930
German artist John Heartfield begins an eight-year association with the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (Workers' Illustrated Newspaper, or AIZ), for which he creates dozens of photomontages, many of which ruthlessly satire Hitler and the Nazis.

Local Context • 1931
British dominions such as South Africa are recognised as individual states and become known as the Commonwealth of Nations under the Statute of Westminster.

Global Art • 1931
The Exposition Coloniale in Paris precipitates protest by the Surrealists, who organise a counter-exhibition.

Global Context • 1931
Japanese soldiers invade the Chinese province of Manchuria.

Local Context • 1932
Bantu World, a European-sponsored African newspaper, launches.

Local Context • 1933
The NP forms a coalition with the SAP and wins the general election.

Global Art • 1933 • I
The Nazis close the Bauhaus in 1933. They consider its progressive education programme and modernist aesthetics threats to the regime.

Global Art • 1933 • II
A liberal arts college is founded in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and becomes a locus for the dissemination of Bauhaus ideas through its European émigré teaching staff, including the German Josef Albers. Black Mountain College remains a site for the production of experimental multimedia work until it closes in 1957.

Global Context • 1933
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany and creates a one-party state under the National Socialist (Nazi) regime. Along with Jewish citizens and others, cultural practitioners and intellectuals flee Nazi Germany en masse.

Local Context • 1934
The Herenigde (reunited) National Party (HNP) is formed by Malan after the NP and the SAP merge to form the United South African National Party (UP).

Local Context • 1935
At the first All Africa Convention in Bloemfontein, delegates condemn the South African government's repressive policies and call on the British parliament to intervene on their behalf.

Global Art • 1935
In the US, the New Deal initiates state employment for artists.

Local Context • 1936
The Representation of Natives Act is passed and coloured voters in the Cape lose their right to vote or own land outside of the designated reserves.

Global Art • 1936
Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, the Museum of Modern Art's first exhibition to focus on Dada, is organised by founding director Alfred H Barr, Jr. It was the most comprehensive presentation of Dada works since the Dadaists' own exhibitions. It was also the first to be organised by a non-participant and the first to present Dada as a historical movement. The exhibition provokes fierce reactions from battling factions among the Dadaists and the Surrealists. Tristan Tzara threatens to forbid Barr from exhibiting his loans when he learns that the exhibition's title had been changed to include Surrealism and André Breton was to write the catalogue preface. Katherine Dreier withdrew her artworks and feuded with Barr over his inclusion of works by children and 'the insane'.

Local Context • 1937
The Native Laws Amendmend Act is passed and further enforces urban segregation.

Global Art • 1937
The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition is mounted by the Nazis in Munich and travels to dozens of other venues around Germany and Austria. The works of the Dadaists are high-ranking among the accused. A follow-up exhibition, Degenerate Music, held in 1938, aims to educate the listening public on the dangers of atonalism and jazz.

Global Context • 1937
Japan declares war against China.

Local Context • 1938
The rise in Afrikaner nationalism reaches a peak with the centenary celebrations of The Great Trek. The Broederbond organises a re-enactment of the Trek to coincide with the centenary celebrations and the Ossewabrandwag is formed as a cultural group.

Local Art • 1938
Walter Battiss, Alexis Preller, and other young South African artists form the New Group in response to the British-inspired academicism of current South African art. They seek an alternative modern art rooted in the integration of African and European aesthetics. The New Group, and South African artists in general, benefit from the immigration of European intellectuals fleeing the totalitarian regimes emerging in Europe at this time.

Global Art • 1938
The Hindenburg, touted as a superior new form of transportation, malfunctions and bursts into flames. The event is captured on film and will be seen throughout the world.

Global Context • 1938
German troops invade Austria, one of many transgressions of the Versailles treaty. Faced with the increasing aggression of Nazi Germany, leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany hold a conference in Munich in an attempt to quell rising political tensions. A separate document is signed between Hitler and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain that guarantees peace between Germany and Britain.

Local Context • 1939
The UP splits over the decision to support Britain in the war. Hertzog resigns and Jan Smuts becomes Prime Minister.

Global Context • 1939
World War II begins when German troops invade Poland, and France and Britain declare war on Germany.

Global Art • 1940
The Arcade Gallery hosts One Man's War Against Hitler, a solo exhibition of John Heartfield's montages.

Local Context • 1941
NP van Wyk Louw publishes Raka, a lengthy rhymed study of evil. Van Wyk Louw is part of the group of Afrikaans writers that came to be known as the Dertigers (writers of the 1930s) who distributed and infuriated the ultra-conservative gatekeepers of Afrikaans with their experimental and rebellious new forms.

Global Context • 1941
Japan attacks the US Naval base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbour. The US declares war on Japan, ending its isolationist policy towards WWII.

Global Art • 1942 • I
Peggy Guggenheim opens the gallery Art of This Century in New York.

Global Art • 1942 • II
Romanian-born French poet, film critic and artist Isidore Isou writes the Manifesto of Lettrist Poetry.

Global Context • 1942
Alan Turing and MHA Newman develop the world's first programmable computer, which is used to crack German codes during the war.

Local Context • 1943 • I
The UP wins the general election.

Local Context • 1943 • II
The ANC grants full membership rights to women. The ANC Women's League is formed.

Local Context • 1943 • III
Frustrated by the moderate policies of the ANC, younger members, including Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, form the ANC Youth League.

Local Context • 1945
The increased demand for labour after the economic expansion of South Africa during WWI leads to a temporary relaxation of laws restricting the movement of non-white South Africans. The major influx of workers from the reserves into Johannesburg during the war leads to a severe housing shortage. Thousands of people take matters into their own hands and begin to settle informally in and around major cities.

Global Art • 1945
Painter Jean Dubuffet begins to collect what he calls 'Art Brut' works characterised as 'primitive' or 'naive', leading to an international interest in 'Outsider Art' by untrained practitioners.

Global Context • 1945 • I
Nazi death camps are liberated by the Allies successively throughout the year, exposing the horrific extent of the anti-semitic Nazi genocide.

Global Context • 1945 • II
America bombs the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb on August 6 and 9, respectively. Japan surrenders on August 10.

Global Context • 1945 • III
WWII ends in May with the German surrender and the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Germany is divided into four zones of Allied military occupation: French, British, American, and Soviet.

Global Context • 1945 • IV
The conclusion of WWII begins a prolonged period of economic expansion in the US.

Local Context • 1946 • I
Over 750 000 African Mine Workers' Union members strike after the mining companies reject the union's calls for improved working conditions. The strike is crushed after five days of protest.

Local Context • 1946 • II
A two-year passive resistance campaign led by Dr Monty Naicker and Dr Yusuf Dadoo begins.

Local Context • 1946 • III
The Fagan Commission of Inquiry, appointed by the government, finds the idea of total segregation between race groups to be entirely impractical and suggests the integration of black labourers as a permanent rather than migrant population in urban areas. The HNP rejects the findings of the commission entirely and instead proposes a policy of apartheid. The policy suggests the complete economic and political segregation of race groups in order to facilitate separate development.

Local Context • 1948 • I
The HNP wins the general elections and DF Malan becomes Prime Minister.

Local Context • 1948 • II
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is drafted and accepted by the majority of member countries within the United Nations. South Africa does not sign.

Local Art • 1948
The Polly Street Centre is established in Johannesburg as a community centre for black township youths. Cecil Skotnes (1926–2009) becomes the director of the arts workshop in 1952, and encourages students to study West and Central African sculptures. Artists such as Durant Sihlali, Ephraim Ngatane, Sydney Kumalo, Ben Macala, Louis Maqhubela, Lucas Sithole, and Helen Sebidi receive their initial training here.

Global Art • 1948 • I
The CoBrA group is formed. Influenced by the Dada movement and Marxist philosophy, and against Surrealism, CoBrA bases its working method on spontaneity and experimentation. South African artist Ernest Mancoba participates in the HØST CoBrA exhibition in Copenhagen.

Global Art • 1948 • II
The exhibition Collage at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, organised by Margaret Miller, includes an important representation of Dada works.

Global Context • 1948 • I
The Soviet Union stops road and rail traffic between Berlin and the West. In a key event in the Cold War, Western powers begin the Berlin Airlift of necessary supplies to the city, which is surrounded by the Soviet zone of Germany.

Global Context • 1948 • II
Samuel Beckett writes the play Waiting for Godot.

Local Context • 1949 • I
The term 'British citizen' on South African passports is replaced by 'Union Citizen'.

Local Context • 1949 • II
The Mixed Marriages Act declares interracial marriage illegal.

Local Art • 1949
Battiss meets Picasso in Paris.

Global Art • 1949 • I
Artists and intellectuals who had fled the Nazis return to East Germany, attracted to its anti-fascist stance and the possibility of realising their socialist ideals. Within a few years, the migration will be reversed, from East to West.

Global Art • 1949 • II
Lettrist member Michel Mourre climbs to the rostrum of the Notre Dame cathedral during Easter Sunday mass and declaims a blasphemous anti-sermon on the death of God.

Local Context • 1950 • I
Jan Smuts dies.

Local Context • 1950 • II
The Appeal Court of Bloemfontein effectively becomes the final authority of South African law.

Local Context • 1950 • III
The Population Registration Act classifies all South African citizens into designated race groups, some of which are then subdivided into further categories ('Xhosa' or 'Zulu', 'Malay' or 'Griqua'). The Race Classification Board, infamous for its absurd testing procedures, is set up to deal with ambiguous cases.

Local Context • 1950 • IV
The Immorality Act extends the Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and declares any interracial sexual relations illegal.

Local Context • 1950 • V
The Group Areas Act enacts nationwide residential segregation by demarcating separate areas for each 'race group'. The act leads to a policy of forced removal.

Local Context • 1950 • VI
Nelson Mandela becomes president of the ANC Youth League.

Local Context • 1950 • VII
The Defend Free Speech Convention in Johannesburg proclaims May 1 as Freedom Day and calls on all organisations to demonstrate.

Local Context • 1950 • VIII
The Communist Party of South Africa declares its dissolution a few days before the government passes the Suppression of Communism Act, No. 44 of 1950.

Local Art • 1950
South Africa receives its first invitation to participate in the Venice Biennale.

Global Context • 1950
After Senator Joseph McCarthy's incendiary speech about communist spies that had infiltrated the US State Department, the 'red scare' in the US leads to several high-profile hearings around the entertainment industry.

Local Context • 1951 • I
The Afrikaner Party fuses with the Herenigde National Party and reverts its name back to the National Party.

Local Context • 1951 • II
DRUM Magazine is founded.

Local Context • 1951 • III
The Bantu Authorities Act is passed.

Local Context • 1951 • IV
Nelson Mandela is banned under the Riotous Assemblies Act.

Local Art • 1951 • I
Formation of non-racial arts group BICA (Bantu Indian Coloured Arts) in Durban.

Local Art • 1951 • II
Christo Coetzee departs for London to undertake postgraduate study at the Slade School of Art under Prof William Coldstream and becomes close friends with designer, photographer and art collector Anthony Denney. He has a solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1955 before leaving for Europe.

Global Art • 1951
Robert Motherwell's The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology is released in the US.

Local Context • 1952 • I
The Abolition of Passes Act strengthens and consolidates previous pass laws and documents, creating what was called the dompas.

Local Context • 1952 • II
Albert Luthuli becomes president of the ANC.

Local Context • 1952 • III
The Defiance Campaign is launched nationwide.

Local Context • 1952 • IV
The Mandela & Tambo law firm is established.

Local Art • 1952
South Africa participates in the Venice Biennale.

Global Art • 1952 • I
Composer John Cage creates his first performance works in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Global Art • 1952 • II
The Sidney Janis Gallery in New York holds the first of four solo exhibitions in 1952, 1952, 1956, and 1959, by Marcel Duchamp. Janis also shows works by Kurt Schwitters in 1952, 1953 and 1956.

Global Art • 1952 • III
Guy Debord and Gil Wolman covertly form the Lettrist International as a breakaway faction from Isidore Isou's Letterists.

Global Context • 1952 • I
Author Jack Kerouac introduces the phrase 'Beat Generation'. Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are recognised as the original Beat writers (South African poet Sinclair Beiles would later be associated with the group).

Global Context • 1952 • II
The Civil Rights struggle begins in earnest in the US after the US Supreme Court rules that racial segregation is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This begins a long struggle for Civil Rights for African Americans and other minority groups in the US that continues into the 1960s.

Local Context • 1953
The Bantu Education Act, The Public Safety Act, The Criminal Law Amendment Act No. 8 and the Separate Amenities Act are passed.

Global Art • 1953
The International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of the CoBrA group) is founded in Switzerland, aiming to integrate experimental practices within art, science and industry and promote a revolutionary cultural attitude.

Local Context • 1954
JG Strijdom replaces DF Malan as Prime Minister.

Global Art • 1954 • I
Louise and Walter Arensberg donate their art collection (which includes forty-three works by Duchamp) to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Global Art • 1954 • II
Considering themselves as a kind of 'dada, without the packaging', the Gutai group is formed in Japan by Jiro Yosihara and Shozo Shimamoto.

Local Context • 1955 • I
Black Sash is founded.

Local Context • 1955 • II
The Freedom Charter is adopted at the multi-racial Congress of the People in Kliptown, Johannesburg.

Global Art • 1955
The first Documenta exhibition of contemporary art is held in Kassel, Germany.

Global Context • 1955 • I
The Bandung conference in Indonesia attempts to forge an Afro-Asian axis in the face of the West's imperial legacy.

Global Context • 1955 • II
Direct American involvement in the Vietnam conflict begins.

Local Context • 1956
The Separate Representation of Voters Act is passed; coloured voters in the Western Cape are disenfranchised.

Local Art • 1956 • I
Publication of the literary magazine The Purple Renoster.

Local Art • 1956 • II
Christo Coetzee undertakes a four-month study period in Italy; his visit to the Rome Quadriennale where he sees work by Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri. He moves to Paris where he is mentored by critic Michel Tapié, influential theorist of 'l'Art Informel'. Celestial Bicycle (1958/1960) is made during this period of experimentation. He exhibits in Japan, Europe and the US between 1958 and 1961, coinciding with the growth of Neo-Dada practices internationally. Coetzee remains in Paris for the next 10 years.

Global Art • 1956
The Independent Group organises its exhibition This Is Tomorrow at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Richard Hamilton shows the iconic Pop Art collage entitled Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?

Local Context • 1957 • I
Removal of God Save the Queen from the South African national anthem, Die Stem, and other British symbols.

Local Context • 1957 • II
156 anti-apartheid activists are accused of treason for their involvement with the Freedom Charter. The Treason Trial drags on for four years. All are eventually acquitted.

Local Art • 1957
Cecil Skotnes represents South Africa at the 4th São Paulo Biennale.

Global Art • 1957 • I
A major show of works by Marcel Duchamp and his two brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, is held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Global Art • 1957 • II
The Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Association merge to form the Situationist International. Guy Debord writes the manifesto, titled Report on the Construction of Situations, promoting a systematic rereading of Karl Marx and advocating a cultural revolution in Western countries.

Global Art • 1957 • III
Parisian artist Yves Klein presents The Void at the Iris Clert Gallery in a series of five works that blend performance and installation, incorporating two- and three-dimensional representation.

Global Context • 1957 • I
The acclaimed literary journal, The Black Orpheus, is founded in Nigeria.

Global Context • 1957 • II
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first earth-orbiting artificial satellite.