The Salon des Independants opened on January 28, 1920, at the Grand Palais, the first time the exhibition took place there after World War I had interrupted the salon. The event became a test of whether the prewar avant-garde could reclaim Parisian attention. More than three thousand works were shown, with a large Cubist presence including Archipenko, Braque, Csaky, Gleizes, Gris, Leger, Lhote, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Severini, and Survage. The same salon also became a stage for Dada provocation: Tristan Tzara and Andre Breton used the Grand Palais setting to advertise a supposed Charlie Chaplin appearance, then turned the disappointed crowd into part of the performance. The opening therefore marks both the institutional return of the Independants and a public clash between Cubist consolidation and Dada disruption.
It helped reset postwar Paris as a battleground for Cubism, Dada, and the public avant-garde.
