Raoul Hausmann, born in 1886 (12 July) in Vienna (Austria), lived in
Berlin beginning in 1900, and deceased in Limoges (France) in 1971 (1
Feb.), is counted among the most important artists of the historical
avant-garde of the 20th century.
He was one of hte founding
members of Dada Berlin in 1918 together with Richard Hulsenbeck and
Frantz Jung. During this period of intense activity he contributed to
the review "Die Freie Strasse" and to the "Club Dada," a special issue
of the same. He founded and ran, together with Joannes Baader and
Richard Hulsenbeck, "Der Dada," the most celebrated review of the Berlin
dadaists.
The Dada revolt demanded a fundamentally new art
form and Hausmann turned towards new means of expression such as
"phonetic poems" and photo-montages.
The process of the
photomontage, of which Hausmann could be considered the father, was also
to be taken up by Hanna Höch, Johannes Baader, John Heartfield, and
Georges Grosz. Yet for Hausmann, Dada had implications well beyond the
realm of the artistic, and one can see that he was more attracted to the
anarchist Baader and the militant communists Grosz and Heartfield than
to Tristan Tzara.
After the Dada movement, he undertook
research in optophonetics, and in 1926 he began his autobiographical
novel, "Hyle," which he finished around 1955 in Limoges. At the
beginning of the 1930s, photography became his preferred means of
expression, with views of the Baltic Sea, the island of Sylt, and
numerous nudes on the beach.
From 1937-38, he lived in
Czechoslovakia, where he began more research on photography. He began a
study on that subject and hoped to publish his research on optophonetic
works with Moholy-Nagy.
In 1944 he moved to Limoges and, thanks
to a parcel of photographic paper sent by Moholoy-Nagy, he made his
first photograms. Then he returned to work in photography, photomontage,
and sound poetry.
From 1959 to 1964 painting became one of the
most important aspects of his artistic production, which he later
transformed into pictographic writing.
Ask for download link in comments.
