Background
Hans Bellmer was born on March 13, 1902 in Kattowitz, which was the part of the German Empire by the time (now the city called Katowice is in Poland).
artist painter Photographer sculptor author
Hans Bellmer was born on March 13, 1902 in Kattowitz, which was the part of the German Empire by the time (now the city called Katowice is in Poland).
Hans Bellmer studied engineering and perspective at the Technical University of Berlin (Technische Hochschule) which he entered in 1923 and left two years later.
Hans Bellmer’s career started from the work at the steel factory and coal mines. In 1924, the artist made his first trip to Paris where he met the Surrealists. After the trip, he founded his own advertising company where he worked as draftsman and typographer. Bellmer made illustrations for Malik Verlag and for the novel Das Eisenbahnglück oder der Anti-Freud by Salomo Friedlaender mostly known as Mynona (1925). Later, Bellmer illustrated the writings of such authors as Marquis de Sade, Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse), Joë Bousquet, Georges Bataille, and others.
At the beginning of 1930s, Hans Bellmer took part at the production of opera The Sandman by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. The same period, the artist started to work on his dolls with deformated body parts in unusual poses which he took pictures of in erotic poses. The art form of the project was in large measure inspired by the writings of Oskar Kokoschka and the project itself was declared as the opppositon to the cult of the perfect body developed by the Nazi Germany. The first doll was made in 1934. Eighteen photographs of the dolls appeared in Bellmer’s anonymous book, The Doll (Die Puppe), published in 1934 in Germany. Some of the photographs also became subjects of the Surrealist journal "Le Minotaure". The debut series of the dolls was followed by the next one in 1936-1938.
In 1938, the artist moved to Paris. Bellmer’s project received the title of the degenerate art from the Nazy Party, and in September of 1939 he was placed in the Camp des Milles prison where the artist had been till the May of 1940. After the liberation, Bellmer returned to Paris.
The first solo show of the artist took place in 1943 at the "Librairie Trentin", a Toulouse bookshop. Then, Bellmer’s artworks were presented at the numerous Surrealist group shows, such as the International Surrealist Exposition of 1947. The artist also presented his creations at the Documenta exhibitions in 1959 and 1964.
In the post war period, Hans Bellmer dropped his doll project and concentrated on the erotic creations – drawings, etchings, photographs and prints of pubescent girls.
Till the end of his days, the artist lived and worked in Paris.
Sketchbook
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Sketches after Nature
Portrait of Jean Arp
Rose Open at Night
La Poupée (The Doll), detail
Self-Portrait
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Sketches after Nature
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Sketches after Nature
The Articulated Hands
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
The Worm-Eaten and Creased
Fire at Marseilles
Woman Machine-Gunner in a State of Grace
Rose ou Vert la nuit
Bound Woman
Untitled
The Square Ball The Cube
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Sketches after Nature
Basement
The Three Young Girls and Death
The Cube
Untitled
La Maison
Nora
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Child and Seeing Hands
Untitled
Illustration for Oeillades ciselées en branche (Glances Cut on the Branch)
The Palace of King Ubu
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Double-Sided Portrait of Unica Zürn (verso)
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
The Woman at the Cathedral
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Peg-Top
Sketches after Nature
Double-Sided Portrait of Unica Zürn (recto)
Sketches after Nature
A Thousand Girls
Variations on a Doll's Game
Phallus Girl
Untitled
Untitled (Variations around La Poupée)
Cephalopod
The Blue Eye
Crimes of Love (Common Sense)
The Cube
The Doll
Plate from La Poupée
Plate from La Poupée
The Doll
Plate 9 of Les Jeux de la poupée (The Games of the Doll)
The Doll
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Plate from La Poupée
The Doll
The Doll
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Plate from La Poupée
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Plate from La Poupée
Plate from La Poupée
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Machine-Gunneress in a State of Grace
The Doll
Plate from La Poupée
The Doll
The Doll
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
The Doll (Maquette for The Doll's Games)
Hans Bellmer was against the ideology of the Nazi Party.
Quotations:
"The female body is like an endless sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams."
"The body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams."
"Yes, my dolls were the beginning. Obviously there was a convulsive flavor to them because they reflected my anxiety and unhappiness. To an extent they represented an attempt to reject the horrors of adult life as it was in favor of a return to the wonder of childhood, but the eroticism was all-important, they became an erotic liberation for me."
"What is at stake here is a totally new unity of form, meaning and feeling: language-images that cannot simply be thought up or written up … They constitute new, multifaceted objects, resembling polyplanes made of mirrors … As if the illogical was relaxation, as if laughter was permitted while thinking, as if error was a way and chance, a proof of eternity."
"Perhaps there was more authentic danger in the photography that was banned - why shouldn't one be able to produce it? But this new enthusiasm finally caused us some trouble, and it suffices to say, if I remember correctly, that it was in this way that my thoughts turned to the young maidens."
Hans Bellmer married Margarete Schnell in 1928. She died of tuberculosis seven years later. Then, the artist had a short romantic relationship with Elise Cadreano, a modern dancer, who he met in Paris in 1938.
In 1954, Bellmer got acquainted with Unica Zürn who had been his life partner for sixteen years.