Partners

French artist of Polish origin. Attended the Berlin Technical School, studying drawing with Georg Groz and establishing contact with other figures related to the German Dada. In the early 1930s Bellmer made several dolls with the assistance of his brother, in part as a protest against Germany's Nazi regime and its body cult, and in part out of an expression of erotic feelings. The articulated and ball-jointed parts, could be dismembered and reassembled in every manner of erotic or asochistic posture. The artist then photographed the fetishistic objects, whose implied sadism appealed to the Surrealists. In late 1935 or early 1936, Bellmer sent a number of his photographs to Paris, where they were received by Breton, Paul Éluard, and soon appeared in the magazine "Minotaure" and in an issue of "Cahiers d'art" devoted to the Surrealist object. When the artist moved from Berlin to Paris, following the death of his wife in February 1938, Éluard selected fourteen of the photographs, and "illustrated" each of them with a short poem, The collaborative work was published, only ten years after, by Editions Premières, in Paris, with the title "Les Jeux de la poupée" (The Games of the Doll).

Highlighted Collections