Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer is best known for his sculptures of grotesque, life-size dolls which resemble mangled, pubescent girls. Each of his dolls possesses a skeleton of wood and metal, which the artist padded out with papier-mâché and plaster curves; often, they are headless, twisted into sexual poses, or deformed by missing or superfluous limbs. Such monstrosity and perversion of a child’s toy perhaps rebelled against the Nazi regime’s obsession with perfect, white male physiques. After the Nazis branded his work as “degenerate,” Bellmer fled to France, where he was embraced by the Surrealists. Along with his dolls, he produced dreamlike, often explicit prints, photographs, and drawings, almost always dealing with female subjects and themes of abject sexuality and forbidden desire. Bellmer’s work has sold for six figures on the secondary market and belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou.