John Heartfield - Career, Works

German photomonteur and painter. Together with George Grosz, he was a leading member of the Berlin Dada group in the aftermath of World War 1, producing satirical collages from pasted, superimposed photographs cut from magazines. A lifelong pacifist and staunch Communist, he moved to East Berlin in 1950, and anglicized his name as a gesture of sympathy with America.

John Heartfield (June 19, 1891–April 26, 1968) is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld.

Career

In 1918 Heartfield began at the Berlin Dada scene, and the Communist Party of Germany.

In 1933, after the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Heartfield relocated to Czechoslovakia, where he continued his photomontage work for the AIZ (which was published in exile); He settled in East Germany and Berlin after World War II, in 1954, and worked closely with theater directors such as Benno Besson and Wolfgang Langhoff at Berliner Ensemble and Deutsches Theater.

In 2005, Tate Britain held an exhibition of his photomontage pieces.

Works

His photomontages satirising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi symbols such as the swastika in order to undermine their propaganda message.

One of his more famous pieces, made in 1935, is entitled Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle! ("Hurray, The Butter is Finished!") It was published on the frontpage of the AIZ in 1935. A parody of the aesthetics of propaganda, the photomontage shows a family at a kitchen table, where a nearby portrait of Hitler hangs and the wallpaper is emblazoned with swastikas. The family — mother, father, old woman, young man, baby, and dog — are attempting to eat pieces of metal, such as chains, bicycle handlebars, and rifles. the song was re-recorded in German and released as a single with Heartfield's work as the cover art.