Untitled

Photography and Media

1935

Hans Bellmer
German, born Poland, 1902–1975

Across his lengthy career Hans Bellmer worked in sculpture, photography, drawing, printmaking, and writing, but his main source of fascination remained consistent: the doll. He constructed his first doll in 1933, inspired by a combination of childhood nostalgia and obscene fantasy. The result was a life-size assemblage of interchangeable body parts adorned with girlish garments and wigs. Bellmer, who had worked as a graphic designer, arguably deployed his erotic imaginings against the conventions of advertising as well as the Nazi obsession with hardened male bodies and the idealized physique. He began obsessively deconstructing, reconstructing, and photographing his doll and publishing the prints in art books and magazines. Encouraged by the Surrealists, who praised his work, Bellmer began a second doll two years later, a version of which is shown in this photograph; it can be seen as provocatively feminine and childish, or disturbingly dismembered and incomplete.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Hans Bellmer
Title: Untitled
Place: Germany (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1935
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Inscriptions: Unmarked recto; inscribed verso, lower left, in graphite: "#3155-C"; verso, lower center, in graphite: "12" [encircled]
Dimensions: Image: 13.9 × 13.6 cm (5 1/2 × 5 3/8 in.); Paper: 14.4 × 14.2 cm (5 11/16 × 5 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg
Reference Number: 1991.1281

Westerbeck, Colin. 1991. “The Intuitive Eye: Photographs from the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Collection.” Exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago. p. 28.
Garlake, Margaret. 2006. “The Sculpture of Reg Butler.” Henry Moore Foundation/Lund Humphries. p. 38.

Art Institute of Chicago, “The Intuitive Eye: Photographs from the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Collection,” October 12, 1991–January 12, 1992. (Colin Westerbeck)
Columbus, Ohio, Wexner Center for the Arts, “Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections 2,” September 20, 1997–January 4, 1998.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 10 Permanent Collection Rotation, November 23, 2013–May 4, 2014.

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