The Future Factory, De Fundatie’s laboratory for new art, gives today’s artists room to explore what forms engaged art can take today. The exhibition is therefore not only an introduction to the founder of photomontage, but also an invitation to the latest generation of artists to draw inspiration from his work. Some of items are on display for the first time, including printed material, drawings and artefacts from East Asia that inspired Heartfield’s work.Īlmost a century on, Heartfield’s work has lost none of its explosive power.
AND YET IT MOVES JOHN HEARTFIELD PLUS
Photography plus Dynamite encompasses all of Heartfield’s large body of work, from book covers and political advertising to theatre designs, photography and animated films. John Heartfield, Black or White - in combat united! ( Ob Schwarz, ob Weiss – im Kampf vereint!), 1931, Photomontage for the AIZ, © The Heartfield Community of Heirs / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. John Heartfield died in 1968, having lived just long enough to witness how the student movement of the 1960s embraced the idiom of his photomontages. He devoted himself to designing books (something he had been doing since the beginning of his artistic career) and theatre sets. There, the new powers that be approached him with suspicion and caution, and he was unable to revive his role as a propaganda artist. After his exile in Britain during the Second World War, Heartfield returned to Germany, choosing to live in the GDR.
He continued his political activities in Prague. Heartfield’s powerful and politically influential images meant he had to flee Germany when Hitler took power in 1933. In 1931 his friend, the art critic Adolf Behne, described his montages as ‘photography plus dynamite’. He was both praised and feared for his biting criticism of national socialism, including some merciless ridiculing of Adolf Hitler.
Heartfield also produced the artwork for the KPD’s election campaigns. The KPD soon recognised the communicative potential of his photographic manipulations, and allowed him to produce the covers for the workers’ magazine AIZ ( Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung). During that period Heartfield also became a member of the KPD, the German communist party. John Heartfield (born Helmut Hertzfelde) – one of the first members of Berlin’s dada movement – and George Grosz invented photomontage in 1919. John Heartfield, Benütze Foto als Waffe! (Use Photo as a Weapon!), 1929 © The Heartfield Community of Heirs / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020 Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Produced in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, it will move on to London after its run in Zwolle. The exhibition will be the biggest retrospective of the work of this ‘influencer avant la lettre’ ever staged in the Netherlands. The German Dadaist, photomonteur and political artist used his art as a weapon, and succeeded in reaching an audience of millions. John Heartfield - PHOTOGRAPHY PLUS DYNAMITEĪ major retrospective of the work of John Heartfield (1891-1968) is shown at Museum de Fundatie.
0 kommentar(er)
