Christian Schad (August 21, 1894 – February 25, 1982) was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.
Schad was born in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, to a prosperous lawyer who supported him for nearly half his life. He studied at the art academy in Munich in 1913. A pacifist, he fled to Switzerland in 1915 to avoid service in World War I, settling first in Zurich and then in Geneva. Both cities were centers of the Dada movement, and Schad became a Dadaist. In Zurich, he met Dadaists like Hans Arp and Hugo Ball, and also Walter Serner, with whom he launched Sirius, a literary review. He was witness of the foundation of the famous Cabaret Voltaire. Beginning in 1918, while living in Geneva, Schad created his own version of the Photogram (which later was named "Schadographs" by Tristan Tzara) where a contour picture is developed on chloride printing-out paper. From 1920 to 1925, he spent some years in Rome and Naples. Having married Marcella Arcangeli, the daughter of a Roman professor, he settled in Naples where he attended painting and drawing courses at the art academy. In 1927 the family emigrated to Vienna. His paintings of this period are closely associated with the New Objectivity Movement. In the late twenties, he returned to Berlin and settled there.