Hans BELLMER

Hans Bellmer – Biography, Etchings and Original Prints

Hans Bellmer was born on 13 March 1902 in Kattowitz, then in German Upper Silesia (now Katowice, Poland), and died in Paris on 24 February 1975. Draughtsman, photographer, maker of objects and printmaker, he became one of the most unsettling voices of Surrealism with his articulated Doll, photographed in Berlin from 1933 and published in the Paris review Minotaure. Settled in France from 1938, he spent the rest of his life taking the human body apart and reassembling it, on paper and on the copper plate. His etchings and engravings, many of them made for illustrated editions of Bataille, Sade and Lautréamont, are prized by collectors for the hair-fine precision of their line.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers several original Hans Bellmer prints: Entre deux eaux (1968), printed on Japan paper and catalogued as Denoël 91; Miroir des songes (1972), an etching and aquatint on cream Arches wove, pencil-signed, from an edition of 150; Visages, a large signed etching in an artist’s proof; and Onze heure et demie. Each sheet has been chosen for the quality of the impression, its edition, provenance and condition.

Silesia and Weimar Berlin, 1902-1933

Bellmer grew up in Kattowitz under a severe father, sharing a private world of toys and memories with his younger brother Fritz. After school his father put him to work in a steelworks and a coal mine, then sent him in 1923 to study engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. There he fell in with George Grosz, John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter, read Marx and drifted towards Dada. In May 1924, on Grosz’s advice, he left engineering to train as a typographer at the left-wing Malik-Verlag, designing book covers and, in 1925, illustrations for Salomo Friedlaender (Mynona). A stay in Paris in 1925-26 introduced him to the Dadaists and Surrealists. He married Margarete Schnell in 1928 and ran a commercial design studio in Berlin until 1933, when he closed it on political grounds after Hitler came to power.

The Doll and the Surrealists, 1933-1938

Withdrawing from any work that might serve the new regime, Bellmer built his first Doll with his brother: a life-size figure of wood, plaster and joints that he staged and photographed. In 1934 he paid for a tiny booklet, Die Puppe, with ten original photographs. A copy reached André Breton, and Minotaure no. 6 (winter 1934-35) ran eighteen of the pictures across a double page as ‘Poupée, variations sur le montage d’une mineure articulée’. In 1936 Guy Lévis Mano’s Éditions GLM published a French version, La Poupée, translated by Robert Valançay. That same year Bellmer was represented at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, before New York and Tokyo (1937) and Paris (1938). After his wife’s death he left Germany for good and settled in Paris in 1938.

Bellmer the Printmaker: Technique, Engravers and Catalogues

Bellmer etched and engraved his own plates from the 1940s, using intaglio techniques – etching, drypoint and the burin – to render a line so fine and continuous that bodies seem drawn with a single thread. From the second half of the 1960s most of his prints were engraved after his drawings by Cécile Reims (1927-2020), a burin engraver who translated nearly 250 of them up to 1975; the Musée Jenisch in Vevey surveyed her career in 2012-13. His key publisher was Georges Visat, master printer of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who launched his imprint in 1962: Madame Edwarda (1965, 12 signed engravings, 167 copies) and the colour etchings of Petit traité de morale (1968, 150 copies on Arches plus 20 in Roman numerals). Twenty etchings for Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror followed in 1971 (Grafik Europa Anstalt, 115 copies). Many illustrated books came with extra suites on Japan paper, and single sheets from them now circulate on their own.

Two references matter. Hans Bellmer, œuvre gravé (Denoël, Paris, 1969), with a text by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, is cited as ‘Denoël’ plus a number. The fuller Catalogue raisonné des estampes de Hans Bellmer 1938-1975 by Fabrice Flahutez (Les Nouvelles éditions Doubleff, Paris, 1999) is cited as ‘Flahutez’ and also covers the plates made after 1969.

War, Internment and the South of France, 1939-1946

As a German national, Bellmer was interned at the Camp des Milles, a former brickworks near Aix-en-Provence, from September 1939 to May 1940, alongside Max Ernst and Wols. Released in 1941 and unable to emigrate to the United States, he lived a precarious life in the south – Castres, Carcassonne, Revel, Toulouse – earning what he could from portraits. Back in Paris after the Liberation, he was introduced to Georges Bataille in 1946 by Alain Gheerbrant.

Unica Zürn, the ‘Anatomy of the Image’ and Late Recognition, 1947-1975

In 1947 Bellmer etched six plates for the new edition of Bataille’s Histoire de l’œil, issued by K éditeur under the false imprint ‘Séville, 1940’. His second Doll became Les Jeux de la poupée (Les Éditions Premières, 1949), fifteen hand-coloured photographs with texts by Paul Éluard. In Berlin in 1953 he met the writer and artist Unica Zürn, who shared his life in Paris until her death on 19 October 1970. His essay Petite anatomie de l’inconscient physique ou l’Anatomie de l’image (Le Terrain vague, 1957) treats the body as a language that can be unpicked like an anagram. He took part in documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964) in Kassel. In London, the Mayfair dealer Robert Fraser showed him in the 1960s alongside Magritte and Dubuffet. Major shows followed at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover (1967), the Stedelijk in Amsterdam (1970) and the CNAC in Paris (1971). A stroke in 1969 left him partly paralysed; he died of cancer in 1975 and lies with Zürn in Père-Lachaise.

British interest has remained strong. Tate holds several works, among them versions of The Doll (c.1936 and c.1937-38), Peg-Top (c.1937-52) and a Portrait of Jean Arp (1957). The first substantial monograph in English, Hans Bellmer by Peter Webb with Robert Short, was published by Quartet Books in London in 1985. In 2006 the Centre Pompidou retrospective ‘Anatomie du désir’ travelled to Munich and then to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, where it ran in the autumn, accompanied by an English catalogue edited by Michael Semff and Anthony Spira.

Collecting Hans Bellmer Prints: A Buyer’s Guide

Catalogue number first. Ask for the Denoël (to 1969) or Flahutez (1938-1975) reference. It pins down the plate, its date and the book or suite it came from.

Edition and justification. Bellmer’s editions are modest: 167 for Madame Edwarda, 150 for Petit traité de morale and Miroir des songes, 99 for some 1971 plates. ‘EA’ or ‘HC’ marks an artist’s or out-of-commerce proof. See the printing.

Signature. An edition impression should be pencil-signed. Be wary of unsigned sheets sold as ‘originals’ and of signatures printed in the plate. See the signature.

Interpretative engravings. A plate cut by Cécile Reims after Bellmer’s drawing and signed by him is an original print of its time. Later restrikes should be described as such. Read more on what makes an original print.

Paper and condition. Japan and Arches sheets are delicate: check for foxing, light-staining and old hinges, and choose conservation framing.

Avoid the obvious traps. Photomechanical reproductions, magazine plates and exhibition posters are not original prints. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

We show Bellmer’s prints alongside those of fellow Surrealists Max Ernst, André Masson, Dorothea Tanning, Man Ray and René Magritte. Explore Surrealism and our etchings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Peter Webb with Robert Short, Hans Bellmer, Quartet Books, London, 1985 · Michael Semff and Anthony Spira (eds), Hans Bellmer, Hatje Cantz, 2006 · Hans Bellmer, œuvre gravé, text by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Denoël, 1969 · Fabrice Flahutez, Catalogue raisonné des estampes de Hans Bellmer 1938-1975, Les Nouvelles éditions Doubleff, 1999 · Tate – Hans Bellmer · Centre Pompidou – ‘Anatomie du désir’ press kit · Musée Jenisch Vevey – Cécile Reims