Ella Bergmann-Michel

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Ella Bergmann-Michel (born October 20, 1895 in Paderborn ; † August 8, 1971 in Vockenhausen near Frankfurt am Main ) was a German painter, photographer and documentary filmmaker . With her picture collages , she is considered a pioneer of classical modernism , which was particularly influenced by Dadaism , Surrealism and the Bauhaus .

Life

Ella was born in Paderborn in 1895 as the daughter of the chemist Wilhelm Bergmann. In 1914 she began studying at the Grand Ducal Saxon University of Fine Arts in Weimar, which was shaped by the reformist approaches of Henry van de Velde . She attended Walther Klemm's drawing class there and met Robert Michel , whom she married in 1919.

From 1920 Ella Bergmann-Michel lived with her husband and two children on the "Schmelzmühlen" in Vockenhausen im Taunus , which developed into an important meeting place for artists such as Willi Baumeister , László Moholy-Nagy , Jan Tschichold and Kurt Schwitters . with whom the Michels had a lifelong friendship and later Joris Ivens , Asja Lacis and Dziga Vertov .

New Frankfurt

In her photographic work, she investigated the relationship between public and private space, the social conditions as well as the working and living situation in Frankfurt am Main. Your style can be assigned to the new way of seeing . In 1931 she was involved in the founding of the group “Das Neue Frankfurt” as part of the Neues Frankfurt project and also founded the “ League for Independent Film ”, which presented avant-garde films by international filmmakers. Through her friendship with the photographer Ilse Bing , she got to know the Dutch architect Mart Stam , with whom she was planning a film about a retirement home in Frankfurt that he and Ferdinand Kramer had built. Between 1931 and 1933 Bergmann-Michel made five documentaries , which were shown together with documentary silent films by Joris Ivens, Flaherty , László Moholy-Nagy, Basse and Clair , among others . In these films she was responsible for the script , direction , production , camera and editing .

While working on her film "Wahlkampf 1932" about the election propaganda of the National Socialists on the occasion of the Reichstag election in November 1932 , Bergmann-Michel was arrested at short notice. She did not continue her filmic attempts after the handover of power to the National Socialists. She then worked as a commercial artist , among others for the Reemtsma cigarette factories and for the high-intensity lamp manufacturer Continental Licht . In 1937 she went to London through Paul Seligmann's agency, where she created advertising graphics for British companies and commented on political events in her home country in representational drawings. At the beginning of the war she returned to the empire.

After 1945

After the war she devoted herself exclusively to the further development of her work in painting and graphics. Her son, Hans Michel (1920–1996) became an important graphic artist and graphic designer .

plant

  • Where do old people live. (16 mm film. Germany 1931) commissioned by the architect Mart Stam
  • The unemployed cook for the unemployed. (16 mm film. Germany 1932)
  • Flying dealers in Frankfurt am Main. (16 mm film. Germany 1932)
  • Fishing in the Rhön. (16 mm film. Germany 1932)
  • Last choice. (Election campaign 1932) (16 mm film. Germany 1932/33)

estate

Exhibitions

  • Group exhibition at the beginning of 2016 Empathy and Abstraction. The modern age of women in Germany in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld .

literature

  • Literature by and about Ella Bergmann-Michel in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Anneli Duscha: Ella Bergmann-Michel. Photographs and films 1927–1935. Steidl, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-86521-176-3 .
  • Megan R. Luke: Our Life Together: Collective Homemaking in the Films of Ella Bergmann-Michel, in: Oxford Art Journal 40 (2017), pp. 27-48.
  • Norbert Nobis, Ute Pollmann: Ella Bergmann-Michel, 1895–1971. Collages, paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, photos, advertising, designs. Sprengel-Museum, Hannover 1990, ISBN 978-3-89169-054-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weimar marriage register, 1919, entry no.344
  2. ^ Vockenhausen death register, 1971, entry no.8
  3. ^ Franz Menges:  Bergmann-Michel, Ella. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 443 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Empathy and abstraction. The modern age of women in Germany. Exhibition in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Oct. 2015 - Feb. 2016, accessed on April 29, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Bergmann-Michel, Ella
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergmann, Ella; Michel, Ella
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer and filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Paderborn
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1971
Place of death Vockenhausen , Taunus