Categories: History

John Heartfield: Pioneer in Photomontage

John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld in Germany in 1891. Heartfield’s reputation as an artist is built upon his innovative use of photomontage techniques and his unapologetic political engagement. The political strain in Heartfield’s art has its roots in his tumultuous upbringing. Socialists and political activists, Heartfield’s parents were convicted of blasphemy and fled Germany when he was eight years old to avoid incarceration. Effectively abandoned, Heartfield and his siblings spent the rest of their childhood living with relatives and guardians.

Having shown an early affinity for painting, Heartfield was educated at the Royal Bavarian Arts and Crafts School in Munich, where he fell under the artistic influence of Albert Weisgerber and Ludwig Hohlwein, both commercial graphic designers. Upon graduation, Herzfeld embarked on his own career as a commercial artist, designing jackets for books, including a selection of political writings by his own estranged father. Heartfield subsequently studied in Berlin with artist Ernst Neumann.

In 1914, as World War I raged on, Heartfield was drafted to serve in a guards regiment in Berlin. Fearful that he would be sent into combat, Hearfield feigned insanity and was discharged from the military. As German nationalism intensified, Heartfield became more and more alienated from his government. It was Germany’s adoption of the war slogan “May God Punish England” that spurred the artist to change his name from Herzfeld to the anglicized “John Heartfield.” This was the first, but not the last, of Heartfield’s acts of public protest against the German government. In 1918, Heartfield became a member of the German Communist Party.

After working for several years as a magazine publisher and film set designer, Heartfield joined the artists’ group Berlin Club Dada and became an influential figure in the Dadaist movement which was staunchly critical of Germany’s involvement in World War I, viewing the government’s values and behavior as barbarous. Heartfield was an organizer of the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920 and edited the Dadaist journal Der DADA. In 1919, Heartfield organized a labor strike following the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and was promptly dismissed from his position with the Military Educational Film Service. Along with his brother Wieland and artist George Grosz, Heartfield founded a satirical political journal called Die Pleite. Heartfield’s own artwork was severely critical of the Weimar Republic. He also edited two Communist periodicals, Der Knuppel and Die Roe Fahne, which eventually published much of the work for which he became famous. During this period, Heartfield married and had two children.

In 1924, Heartfield met Bertolt Brecht, a German poet, playwright, and committed Marxist who had a strong influence on Heartfield’s art and his use of it to convey political messages. That same year, Heartfield began producing photomontages, showing his first photomontage “After 10 Years – Fathers and Sons” in Berlin on the tenth anniversary of the start of World War I.

Photomontage is a form of collage which involves creating a composite image by combining elements from several different photographs. Individual examples of photomontage often achieve their effect by juxtaposing unusual or contrasting objects or concepts in order to startle or provoke the viewer. In its manipulation of the viewer’s perception of reality, the photomontage was a precursor of the modern-day photo-shopped digital image. The artists of the Dada Movement pushed the photomontage to the forefront of modern art, and, in their hands, it became a powerful form of political criticism. Heartfield’s photomontages were particularly politically provocative and often used images from political journals to satirize figures in the German government. On such provocative work was “Use Photography As A Weapon” which depicted Hearfield himself decapitating the police chief of Berlin.

In the 1930s, Heartfield became more deeply involved in Communist politics, traveling frequently to the Soviet Union to lecture and exhibit his artwork. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Heartfield moved to Czechoslavakia where he continued to make photomontages. In 1938, fearing an imminent German invasion of his adopted country, Heartfield relocated again to England. Many of Heartfield’s photomontages during this period depict Adolf Hitler and Nazi symbols including the swastika, satirizing the leader and his philosophy in such a way as to undermine and ridicule their propaganda. One of Heartfield’s most famous works is the 1935 “Hurray, the butter is gone!”, which depicts a hungry German family sitting in a kitchen with wallpaper adorned with swastikas, attempting to make a meal of pieces of metal, including chains and rifles, as Hitler looks on from a portrait hanging on the wall. As a result of this and other photomontages, Heartfield’s work was banned by the Nazi Regime during the Third Reich. It was not until the 1950s that his work was rediscovered.

Heartfield returned to Berlin after World War II, settling in East Germany in 1954. He worked extensively in German theater during the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of his death in 1969, Heartfield was engaged in preparations for a retrospective exhibition of his photomontages which was held at the ICA in London. More recently, in 2005, a comprehensive exhibition of his work was shown at the Tate Gallery in England.

Heartfield’s work was profoundly influential on modern advertising, which has borrowed his idea of photomontage, combining seemingly unrelated images in a single ad to evoke fascination, shock, humor, convey a unique message. He also had an enormous impact on the generation of young artists who discovered his work in the 1950s and 1960s and came to prominence in the latter half of the twentieth century. Among the artists who drew upon Heartfield’s techniques and artistic philosophy are the pop-artists, including the iconic Andy Warhol. Heartfield’s work has been quoted and referenced not only by modern and contemporary artists, but also by modern pop and rock musicians and in theater and film.