Hans Bellmer

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Hans Bellmer (born March 13, 1902 in Katowice (now Katowice, Poland ), † February 24, 1975 in Paris ) was a German photographer , sculptor , painter and author .

life and work

Memorial plaque on the house at Ehrenfelsstrasse 8a, in Berlin-Karlshorst

As a child, Bellmer learned to fear and hate his tyrannical father - who also completely controlled his loving mother. He and his younger brother Fritz found shelter from this oppressive family atmosphere in a secret garden that had been decorated with toys and souvenirs. After graduating from high school, Bellmer worked at the insistence of his father in a steelworks and in coal mining.In 1923 he was sent to the Technical University in Berlin , but was much more interested in politics, the work of Karl Marx and discussions with the artists of the Dada movement. Bellmer met John Heartfield , George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter know.

On the advice of George Grosz, he broke off his engineering studies in May 1924 and began an apprenticeship as a typographer at Malik-Verlag . He designed book covers and created book illustrations, for example for Mynona (Salomon Friedlaender) s Das Eisenbahnwlück or the Anti-Freund (1925). Bellmer visited Paris from 1925 to 1926 , where he came into contact with the Dadaists and Surrealists . In Berlin-Karlshorst he opened a studio for advertising drawings , which he gave up in 1933 for political reasons. In 1928 he married Margarete Schnell.

From the 1930s until his death, Bellmer dealt almost exclusively with erotic depictions of the female anatomy. Whether in drawings, sculptures, photographs or his graphic work - the focus was always on the erotic image of an often battered female body. Due to the repetitive nature of the topic, he was said to have numerous neurotic disorders, from fetishism , voyeurism , sadomasochism to pedophilia , while others value and appreciate his work simply as surrealism and "anarchist-erotic stagings".

In 1933 Bellmer constructed fetish-like dolls from parts of mannequins with wood, metal and plaster - as a whole body or a body fragment, of which he took photographs in various positions. In 1934, The Doll was published at Bellmer's expense , with an essay by Bellmer and ten glued-in photographs. Bellmer sent the recordings to Paul Éluard and André Breton in Paris and eighteen were published in December 1934 in the magazine Minotaure under the title Poupée: variations sur le montage d'une mineure articulée . In 1935 Bellmer visited Paris and was received by André Breton. La Poupée appeared the next year . More shots a second doll also appeared in Minotaure and in one issue of Cahiers d'Art , which the surrealistic was dedicated object. Photos of Bellmer's dolls were shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in its surrealism exhibition.

Gravestone of Unica Zürn and Hans Bellmer on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

After the death of his wife , Bellmer emigrated to Paris in 1938, where he continued to work on his puppet theme. In 1939 he was interned in the Les Milles camp, where he met Max Ernst . There they created the common work Creations, the creatures of the imagination . After the war, the book Les Jeux de la poupée (The Doll's Games) could be realized, with fifteen recordings by Bellmer and fourteen short poems by Paul Éluard that "illustrate" them.

In 1953 he met the writer Unica Zürn , with whom he worked until she died. They moved to the Paris hotel L'Espérance, where they had no friends and few contacts, hardly went out, and increasingly isolated themselves from the outside world. In 1954, the story of O appeared in France with a lithograph by Bellmer on the front page. In 1958 Bellmer received the William and Noma Copley Foundation Prize. In 1959 and 1964 Bellmer was invited to documenta II and documenta III in Kassel . In 1970, Zürn, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia in the early 1960s, fell to her death from their shared apartment in Paris. Bellmer died alone in Paris in 1975. Unica Zürns and Hans Bellmer's grave is on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise .

As an important representative of fantastic realism , he had a profound influence on artists such as Paul Wunderlich and Horst Janssen .

Exhibitions

  • International Exhibition of Surrealism, London 1936
  • International Exhibition of Surrealism, New York 1937
  • International Exhibition of Surrealism, Tokyo 1937
  • Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme , Galerie Beaux-Arts, Paris 1938
  • Le Surréalisme en 1947, Galerie Maeght, Paris 1947
  • International Exhibition of Surrealism, Saarbrücken 1951
  • International Exhibition of Surrealism, Daniel Cordier Gallery , Paris 1959
  • Art Office Berlin-Tempelhof , Berlin 1967
  • 2010: New National Gallery Berlin; Double Sexus: Bellmer - Bourgeois

literature

  • Marvin Altner: Hans Bellmer, the doll's games. To the puppet representations in the fine arts from 1914-1938 . VDG-Verlag, Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-89739-467-7 (plus FU dissertation, Berlin 2002)
  • Renate Berger: Pars pro toto, On the relationship between artistic freedom and sexual integrity . In: Renate Berger, Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat (Hrsg.): The garden of lust, on the interpretation of the erotic and sexual in artists and their interpreters . DuMont, Cologne 1985, pp. 150-199, ISBN 3-7701-1627-5
  • Pierre Dourthe: Hans Bellmer. Le principe de perversion . Faur, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-909882-32-2
  • Alex Grall (Ed.): The drawings by Hans Bellmer . Propylaea Publishing House, Berlin 1969
  • Malcolm Green: Introduction , in The Doll , Hans Bellmer, trans. Malcolm Green. Atlas Press, London 2006, ISBN 1-900565-14-5
  • Therese Lichtenstein: Behind Closed Doors. The Art of Hans Bellmer . University of California Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-520-20984-2
  • Gottfried Sello: Falling for the dolls . In: Die Zeit , No. 19/1967
  • Michael Semff / Anthony Spira (eds.): Hans Bellmer . Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 978-3-7757-1793-9
  • Sue Taylor: Hans Bellmer. The Anatomy of Anxiety . MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002, ISBN 0-262-20130-5
  • Peter Webb, Robert Short: Hans Bellmer. Quartet Books, New York 1985
  • Peter Webb, Robert Short: Death, Desire and the Doll: The Life and Art of Hans Bellmer. Solar Books, 2006.
  • Fabrice Flahutez, "Hans Bellmer et Georges Bataille, une collaboration éditoriale", cat. exhib. (French) Sous le signe de Bataille. Masson, Fautrier, Bellmer , Christian Dérouet (currator), Musée ZERVOS à Vézelay, 2012.
  • Fabrice Flahutez, «Bellmer illustrateur de Bataille. Des pièces inédites au dossier des gravures d'Histoire de l'œil (1945-1947) ”, in Les Nouvelles de l'estampe , n ° 227-228, mars 2010, p. 27-32. (French)
  • Hans Bellmer: Anatomie du Désir (2006, [Éditions Gallimard / Center Pompidou ]). (French)
  • The Doll , Hans Bellmer, Atlas Press, London, 2006, trans. Malcolm Green (first complete translation of Bellmer's suite of essays, poems and photos from the final German version)
  • Sue Taylor. Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety (2002, MIT Press).
  • Therese Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer, University of California Press , 2001.
  • Fabrice Flahutez, "Hans Bellmer: l'anagramme poétique au service d'un rêve surréaliste", Histoire de l'art , n ° 52, Paris, 2001, p. 79-94. (French)
  • Celine Masson, La fabrique de la poupée chez Hans Bellmer , Paris, éd. L'Harmattan, 2000. (french)
  • Pierre Dourthe, Hans Bellmer: Le Principe de Perversion , Paris, Jean-Pierre Faur Éditeur, 1999. (french)
  • Fabrice Flahutez, Catalog raisonné des estampes de Hans Bellmer , Paris, Nouvelles Éditions Doubleff, 1999. (french)
  • Robert C. Morgan . "Hans Bellmer: The Infestation of Eros", in A Hans Bellmer Miscellany , Anders Malmburg, Malmo and Timothy Baum, New York, 1993

Web links

Commons : Hans Bellmer  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Minotaure, No. 6, Winter, 1934-5, pp. 30-1.
  2. ^ Translated by the surrealist Robert Valençay for Guy Lévis-Mano, Paris 1936.
  3. ↑ Minotaure, No. 8, 1936, 10, 1937; Cahiers d'art, N. 11, 1936.
  4. ^ Pictures from the brick factory in Les Milles , welt.de, accessed on October 20, 2013
  5. ^ Hans Bellmer: Les jeux de la poupée: illustrés de textes par Paul Éluard. Les Editions premières, Paris 1949.
  6. ↑ Karoline Hille: Unica Zürn und die Schwesterkünste, in: Ingrid Pfeiffer (Ed.): Fantastische Frauen - Surreal Welten from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo , catalog for the exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt), Hirner Verlag, Munich 2020, ISBN 978 -3-7774-3413-1 , pp. 327-332
  7. ↑ hans-bellmer.com
  8. ↑ Bellmer; William and Noma Copley Foundation, Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd. London and Bradford 1958
  9. ^ Catalog of the Kestner Society Hanover, text by Dr. Wieland Schmied (including an œuvre directory of the graphic arts)
personal data
SURNAME Bellmer, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer, sculptor, painter and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Katowice
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1975
Place of death Paris