Hans Bellmer

HANS BELLMER (Katowice, 1902 - Paris, 1975).
"Les 120 Journées de Sodome".
Etching on paper. Copy 11/12,
Enclosed document of the Sairin Gallery (Japan).
Signed and justified in pencil.
Measurements: 27.5 x 21 cm (print); 38 x 28 cm (paper).
The work is part of a series of illustrations that Bellmer made for the homonymous book by the Marquis de Sade.
Hans Bellmer was a German artist, photographer and writer, associated with surrealism and known for his exploration of erotics, desire and fragmented identity. Initially trained as an engineer, he soon abandoned that path to devote himself to art, influenced by the interwar avant-garde and by his rejection of the political and moral authoritarianism of Nazi Germany.
In the 1930s he began to build his famous articulated dolls, life-size sculptures that combined mechanical artifice with a disturbing sensuality. These figures, photographed and presented in carefully crafted compositions, became a symbol of the body as a space of desire, transformation and violence, anticipating reflections on gender and bodily identity.
Exiled in Paris since 1938, Bellmer joined the Surrealist circle led by André Breton, collaborating with artists and writers such as Hans Arp, Max Ernst and Paul Éluard. His later work, developed between drawing, photography and engraving, maintained a constant tension between eros and psyche, between the imaginary and the disturbing.
Hans Bellmer died in Paris in 1975, leaving behind a production that, beyond its provocative component, constitutes a profound inquiry into the limits of the body and representation, and one of the most singular contributions to the European surrealist imaginary of the 20th century.