German draughtsman, printmaker, photographer and sculptor, born on 13 March 1902 in Kattowitz (now Katowice, Poland), died on 24 February 1975 in Paris.
Life
Hans Bellmer first worked as a draughtsman for his own advertising agency, until 1926. In 1933, in Berlin, he built his first doll, now lost and known through some twenty photographs. He self-published ten of them in 1934 in Die Puppe, a French version of which, La Poupée, appeared in 1936.
Having come to Paris in 1935, he became friends there with Paul Éluard among others. In 1938, after the Nazis branded his work “degenerate art”, he left Germany for France, where he lived until his death. From September 1939 to May 1940 he was interned as a German national in the Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence; during the war he forged papers for the Resistance.
In 1954 he met Unica Zürn, who shared his life until her suicide in 1970. They lie together in the same grave in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
The work
The doll, staged in photographic tableaux, is at the heart of his work, which extends into erotic drawings, prints, photographs and paintings. He made the etchings for the 1940 edition of Histoire de l’œil and in 1957 published L’Anatomie de l’image.
The gallery has shown, among other works, Nu à la feuille (c. 1937, pencil and gouache, double-sided drawing, 29 x 25 cm), in The Hold of the Senses in 2022, then in the gallery’s 25th anniversary exhibition in 2026.
Exhibitions and collections
- The Hold of the Senses. Erotic Variations, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, Paris, 11 February to 19 March 2022
- Surrealist Prelude, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 7 June to 6 July 2024
- The Gallery’s 25th Anniversary, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 22 May to 19 June 2026
Looking back at their exhibitions
- Surrealist Prelude 2024