Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971) was an Austrian artist and writer, born in Vienna and raised primarily in Berlin, where he became one of the central figures of Berlin Dada from 1918. With Hannah Höch, he was among the inventors of photomontage; his own montages subjected consumer culture, militarism and bourgeois society to savage visual critique. His optophonetic poems — including the celebrated fmsbw (1918) — are foundational documents of sound poetry, treating typography and vocalisation as inseparable, the visual form of letters determining their sonic performance.