John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was an artist and a pioneer in the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. Heartfield also created book jackets for authors such as Upton Sinclair, as well as stage sets for such noted playwrights as Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator.
Continue reading JOHN HEARTFIELD :: HURRAH DIE BUTTER IST ALLE, 1935
Hannah Hoch (November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978)
was one of the pioneers of the photomontage, combining, collating and layering images from contemporary magazines. She was the lone female participant in the Berlin Dada group, although Sophie Täuber, Beatrice Wood, and Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven were significant Dada players albeit in different locales. Besides being the only female, Hoch was never quite accepted by the Berlin Dadaists, who felt that though Hoch’s works possessed a Dada aesthetic, they were conceptually still making a feminist social critique based upon “logic”. Dada had given up “logic” in favor of chaos, nonsense and irrationality. Continue reading HANNAH HOCH :: German Dada Photomontage
