Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. His experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.

Hausmann, a founder member of the Berlin Dada group, developed photomontage as a tool of satire and political protest. The fragment of a German banknote behind the critic’s neck suggests that he is controlled by capitalist forces. The words in the background are part of a poem poster made by Hausmann to be pasted on the walls of Berlin.

Hausmann’s artistic contributions to Dada were purposefully eclectic, consistently blurring the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, and dance. His “optophonetic” poems of early 1918 fused lyrical texts with expressive typography, insisting on the role of language as both visual and acoustic.