Hans Bellmer
1934 (taken) 1936 (print)
Untitled
[La poupée]

Gelatin silver print
7.7 x 11.7 cm
 
National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada
Purchased 2002, No. 40981, © Estate of Hans Bellmer / SODRAC (2013)
 
Curatorial description (Accessed: 18 December 2015)
Born in Poland, Hans Bellmer held his first exhibition of paintings at the age of twenty. In the early 1920s, he left his homeland for Berlin where he enrolled in the engineering program at the Technical College. Making contact with prominent German artists of the period, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and the Herzfelde brothers, Bellmer contributed drawings to the satirical German magazine Der Knuppel. In 1933, as a protest against Hitler's government, Bellmer closed the design agency he had run since 1926. He then began the construction of his first doll, which was reputedly inspired by the operatic version of Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann". The following year in 1934, he published Die Puppe ("The Doll"), a book of ten photographs with an introductory essay that he wrote himself. This publication caught the attention and interest of surrealist author and artist, André Breton, who published eighteen of the doll photographs in the December 1934 issue of "Minotaure". By the time the French edition of "Die Puppe, La poupée", was issued in 1936, Bellmer had moved on to producing a new and even more bizarre doll that was articulated with ball and socket joints.
 
LL/63613