Hans BELLMER

Art does not fall obediently into the categories we have created; in fact, it tends to evaporate as soon as its name is uttered, preferring to travel incognito. Its best moments are when it is unconscious of being art.

When Hitler came to power, the German artist Hans BELLMER (born March 13, 1902 in Katowice, [part of the then German Federal Empire] and died February 23, 1975 in Paris) engaged in a subversive process that aimed to undermine the myth of anatomical perfection extolled by the Third Reich. He dismembered the body of his doll and rebuilt it in incongruous combinations that evoked a feeling of “uncanny strangeness” described by Freud.

Surrealist photography was officially born in 1924 with the movement Manifesto by André Breton. The thirst for new experiences which inspired the surrealist oeuvre sustained the exploration of the photographic medium in various forms. Man Ray’s solarization involving exposing the negative to light, Raoul Ubac’s brûlages, Pierre Molinier’s photomontages or André Kertész’s mirror effects are all examples of techniques which de-realise subjects and objects, giving them an element of mystery…Surrealist beauty is irrational and coincidental, marvellous and convulsive.