565 - Ella Bergmann-Michel (1895, Paderborn – Neustadt, Black Forest, 1971)

Ella Bergmann-Michel (1895, Paderborn – Neustadt, Black Forest, 1971) Untitled (Demonic Birds) Pencil, ink, and spray paint on paper. (1939). Approx. 50 x 65 cm. Signed lower right. • An almost ethereal depiction full of virtuosic lightness • In her characteristically poetic visual language, Bergmann-Michel depicts a somber theme • From the estate of the artist couple Michel and Bergmann-Michel Ella Bergmann-Michel, known to friends simply as EBM, ranks among the leading figures of the avant-garde alongside her husband Robert Michel, Kurt Schwitters, Willi Baumeister, and László Moholy-Nagy, and is a pioneer of the art of collage. In 1917, the artist couple Bergmann and Michel met while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar and would collaborate closely for the rest of their lives. They worked for a short time at the newly founded Bauhaus but soon settled at the “Schmelz” in the Taunus region—an old paint mill in Michel’s hometown—which they later named the “Heimatmuseum of Modern Art.” They were close friends with Johannes Molzahn and Kurt Schwitters, as well as the photographers Martha Hoepffner and Ilse Bing. In addition to her extremely diverse artistic work, Ella Bergmann-Michel worked as a commercial artist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker, and created various interior design concepts. In the mid-1920s, she was involved in the social reform movement known as “New Frankfurt,” where, beginning in 1930, she co-led the “Working Group for New Film/League for Independent Film” with Paul Seligmann. Due to the political developments of the 1930s, the artist couple largely withdrew from the public art scene. To support their family, Robert Michel ran a fish farm at the Schmelzmühle, while Ella Bergmann-Michel devoted herself to farming and raising small livestock. It was not until after the end of World War II that the couple resumed their artistic activities. Thanks to the exhibition “Pioneers of Collage,” shown in Leverkusen in 1963, the life’s work of the artist couple Bergmann/Michel was rediscovered and brought to public attention. Following her time at the academy, during which she created numerous woodcuts influenced by Expressionism, Ella Bergmann-Michel began producing her first Dada-Futurist works as early as 1917–18: material pictures glued together from found objects—so-called assemblages—and paper collages. These works are mostly dominated by circular forms that clearly evoke the mechanics of wheels. Thus, EBM is undoubtedly the (until now largely unrecognized) pioneer of both the collage technique and the wheel motif, which can be found shortly thereafter in the works of her husband Robert Michel and Kurt Schwitters. Exhibition: Ella Bergmann-Michel and Robert Michel—A Modernist Artist Couple. Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2018; Heimatmuseum of Modern Art. Ella Bergmann-Michel—Robert Michel, Galerie Eric Mouchet, Paris, 2026. Provenance: Bergmann-Michel estate. Taxation: subject to differential taxation (VAT: Margin Scheme).