JOHN HEARTFIELD
Peter Pachnicke and Klaus Honnef [Editors]
Peter Pachnicke and Klaus Honnef (editors): JOHN HEARTFIELD. NYC: Abrams, 1992. First edition of the English Translation. Folio. Red cloth stamped in silver. Photographically printed dust jacket. 342 pp. 289 illustrations. 83 plates. Jacket spine sunned, as usual with this volume. Uncommon in cloth. A fine copy. 10.5 x 12 hardcover book with 342 pages with 289 illustrations including 83 plates in full color. Includes bibliography and index. Foreword by John Hoole, Declan McGenagle, Richard Calvocoressi. Major catalogue and critical retrospective of Helmut Herzfeld (1891-1968), known primarily as one of the inventors of photomontage, and as a member of the Berlin Dada group in 1920.
Extraordinarily Comprehensive study of the artist's work. Heartfield's Dada pieces, virulent photomontages, posters, theatre sets, and book designs show his technique of combining ironic political slogans with stirring imagery. Very strong stuff, much more acerbic than similar work produced by El Lissitzky, Rodchenko,Klutsis or Moholy-Nagy. He broke with the Dadaists, since they did not fulfill his radical conception of the artist's role in society. He had a distaste for the materialism, greed and immorality rampant in Germany in the 1920s. His aim was to mobilize social energy, to expose with his forceful political art the evils, corruption, dangers, and abuses of power in the Nazi regime.
Heartfield trained as a graphic artist in Munich and collaborated extensively with George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann and Hanna Höch and played a key role in founding the Berlin wing of Dada. Heartfield and Grosz began experimenting with photomontage in 1915-16, later to develop photomontage into a powerful satirical tool. His best known images were published between 1930 and 1938 in the magazine Arbetier-Illustrierte Zeitung, renamed Volks Illustrierte.
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