660 - Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer Untitled (from: Les Jeux de la poupée) 1938-49 4 vintage hand-coloured gelatin silver (contact) prints, each laid down on cardboard. Each 5.3 x 5.3 cm (cardboard each 12.3 x 9.4 cm). 3 prints signed in pencil below the image on the mount. Provenance From Lotte Pritzel, Berlin, to the family of the current owner, Bavaria Literature Pierre Dourthe, Bellmer. Le principe de Perversion, Paris 1999, ill. pp. 66 (variants); Agnès La Beaumelle, Alain Sayag et al. (eds.), Hans Bellmer. exhib.cat. Musée Centre Pompidou, Paris i.a., Ostfildern 2006, ill. pp.82 (variants). In 1933, Hans Bellmer started working on his initially rigid, later movable doll models, which he staged both as seductresses and objects of desire, exposing them in his photographs to sexual (and violent) fantasies. The so-called 'second doll' illustrated here, with its variable ball joints and extra limbs - the development of which involved the Berlin doll artist and friend Lotte Pritzel as an idea contributor - was completed by Bellmer in 1935. Largely isolated due to the political situation in Germany, in 1936/37 he worked reclusively on the erotic setups of this doll, the publication of which caused a stir in Parisian Surrealist circles. After his wife's death in 1938, he moved to Paris. The publication planned for 1939 - Bellmer's second book on the subject - with texts by Paul Eluard, was only released in Paris in 1949 due to the war, under the title ‘Lex Jeux de la Poupée.’ It was a handmade limited edition (with pasted-in, coloured original photographs), produced in a run of 136 copies. The four hand-coloured contact prints on cardboard are probably directly related to the planned publication. The Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris holds a design model for the book with 24 loose picture cards, which are identical in size, colouring, and mounting to the examples presented here, although the colour is varied through hand colouring with aniline dye.