Michel Sanouillet is an art historian and one of the foremost French specialists on the Dada movement.Born in 1924 in Montélimar, Drôme, Sanouillet joined the French Resistance in the Vercors in 1942. After a B.A. and an M.A. at the Sorbonne in 1945, he began working on 20th century avant-garde movements. In 1964, he was appointed research assistant at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research).From 1950 to 1969 he taught at the University of Toronto where he directed one of the first avant-garde Canadian films ("Parking On This Side"), which obtained an "Honorable Mention" at the 1951 Canadian Film Awards. During these years in Toronto with his Canadian wife Anne he started a French newspaper "Les Nouvelles françaises", opened a French bookstore, founded a French film society and a theatrical group "Les Tréteaux de Paris". In 1959 with Marcel Duchamp he published the first edition of Duchamp's notes, "Marchand du sel".In June 1965 at the Sorbonne he defended his two State doctoral theses: "Dada à Paris" and "Francis Picabia et 391", thus becoming the first university scholar to introduce the Dada movement to the public at large. Published as a book, "Dada à Paris" has been the founding work and the source of most of the research published on the subject since that time. The book makes use of exclusive first-hand documents summing up the information gleaned over twenty years from those of the Dada writers and artists who were still alive in the sixties and whom he knew personally, including Breton, Picabia, Tzara, Duchamp, Man Ray and Ribemont-Dessaignes.In France, from 1968 on, he was appointed first at the Université de Reims where he was head of the French Department, then in 1969 at the Université de Nice, where he became director of the Centre du xxe siècle (Centre of 20th Century Studies) in 1974, then dean of the UER Civilisations (Department of Civilizations) in 1983. From 1968 to 1990 he gave over a hundred courses or lectures in some forty universities or cultural centers on all five continents. In 1985 he became a consultant for the Ministry of Research and Universities.Other Activities· 1964: Expert in modern and contemporary art to the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal· From 1975 to 1991: Member of the National University Council· President, Vice-President or member of a dozen university appointment committees· Founder and first President of the International Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism