Raoul Hausmann
(1886 - 1971) |
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experimental photographic collages Art Work
| Name: |
Raoul Hausmann |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality: |
Austrian |
| Birth: |
1886 |
| Death: |
1971 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
experimental photographic collages |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Berlin Dada |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Writer
Photographer/ Collagist |
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Biography
German artist, born in Vienna, Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I. In 1990 he moved to Berlin to study art; his earliest art training was from his father, a professional conservator and painter. He met Johannes Baader, an eccentric architect and another future member of Dada, in 1905. That same year Hausmann enrolled at a private Art School in Berlin, where he remained until 1911.
After seeing expressionist paintings in Herwarth Walden's gallery Der Sturm in 1912, Hausmann started to produce expressionist prints in Erich Heckel's studio, and became a staff writer for Walden's magazine, also called Der Sturm, which provided a platform for his earliest polemical writings against the art establishment. In keeping with his expressionist colleagues, he initially welcomed the war, believing it to be a necessary cleansing of a calcified society, although being an Austrian citizen living in Germany he was spared the draft.
Hausmann was one of a group of young disaffected artists that began to form the nucleus of Berlin Dada around him. Huelsenbeck delivered his First Dada Speech in Germany, January 22, 1918 at the fashionable art dealer IB Neumann's gallery, Kurfurstendamm Berlin. Over the course of the next few weeks, Hausmann, Huelsenbeck, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Jung, Hoch, Walter Mehring and Baader started the Club Dada. The first event staged was an evening of poetry performances and lectures against the backdrop of a retrospective of paintings by the establishment artist Lovis Corinth at the Berlin Sezession, April 12th, 1918. Amongst the contributors, Huelsenbeck recited the Dada Manifesto, Grosz danced a Sincopation homaging Jazz, whilst Hausmann ended the evening by shouting his manifesto The New Material In Painting at the by-now near riotous audience. After Hausmann contributed to the first group show, held at Isaac Neumann's Gallery, April 1919, the first edition of Der Dada appeared in June 1919. Edited by Hausmann and Baader, after receiving permission from Tristan Tzara in Zurich to use the name, the magazine also featured significant contributions from Huelsenbeck. The periodical contained drawings, polemics, poems and satires, all typeset in a multiplicity of opposing fonts and signs.
The First International Dada Fair, in 1920, organized by Hausmann, Grosz and Heartfield, along with Max Ernst, the fair was to become the most famous of all Berlin Dada's exploits, featuring almost 200 works by artists including Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Ernst, Otto Dix & Rudolf Schlichter, as well as key works by Grosz, Hoch and Hausmann. The work Tatlin At Home, 1920, can be clearly seen in one of the publicity photos taken by a professional photographer; the exhibition, whilst financially unsuccessful, gained prominent exposure in Amsterdam, Milan, Rome and Boston. The exhibition also proved to be one of the main influences on the content and layout of Entartete Kunst, the show of degenerate art put on by the Nazis in 1937, with key slogans such as 'Nehmen Sie DADA Ernst' (Take Dada seriously!) appearing in both exhibitions.
The most famous work by Hausmann, Der Geist Unserer Zeit - Mechanischer Kopf (Mechanical Head [The Spirit of Our Age]), c. 1920, is the only surviving assemblage that Hausmann produced around 1919-20. Constructed from a Hairdresser's wig-making dummy with various measuring devices attached, including a ruler, pocket watch mechanism, typewriter and camera segments and a crocodile wallet. Huelsenbeck finished his training to become a doctor in 1920 and started to practice medicine; By the end of the year he had published the Dada Almanach and The History of Dadaism, two historical records that implied that Dada was at an end; in the aftermath, Hausmann's friendship with Kurt Schwitters deepened, and Hausmann started to take steps toward International Modernism. In September 1921, Hausmann, Hoch, Schwitters and his wife Helma undertook an 'anti-dada' tour to Prague. As well as his recitals of sound poems, he also presented a manifesto describing a machine 'capable of converting audio and visual signals interchangeably, that he later called the Optophone'. After many years of experimentation, this device was patented in London in 1935. He also took part in an exhibition of photomontages in Berlin in 1931, organize by Cesar Domela Nieuwenhuis.
In later years, Hausmann exhibited his photographs widely, concentrating on nudes, landscapes and portraits. As Nazi persecution of avant-garde artists increased, he immigrated to Ibiza, where his photos concentrated on ethnographic motifs of pre-modern Ibizan life. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1937, but was forced to flee again in 1938 after the German invasion. He moved to Paris, then Peyrat-le-Chateau, near Limoges until 1944 living illegally with his Jewish wife Hedwig in a quiet secluded manner. After the Normandy landings in 1944 the pair finally moved to Limoges. The war over, Hausmann was once again able to work openly as an artist. He resumed correspondence with Schwitters with the aim to collaborate on a Poetry Magazine, PIN, but Schwitter's death in 1948 stopped the project. He published books about Dada, including the autobiographical Courier Dada, (1958). He also worked on Photograms, photomontages & sound poetry, and even returned to painting in the fifties. |
Samples of Work
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