Index of Artists.

LOUIS ARAGON

b. Paris 3 October 1897.

d. Paris 24 December 1982.

Writer. In 1919 Aragon founded the review Litératture with André Breton and Phillippe Soupault. Between 1924-29 he regularly contributed to the Surrealist Periodical La Revolution Surréaliste. However, in 1927 he became a member of the Communist party, in 1930-31 he visited the USSR and after about 1932 he began to move away from the surrealist movement. During World War Two, he was a very popular resistance poet.

HANS (JEAN) ARP

b. Strassburg, Germany (now Strasbourg, France) 16 September 1886.

d. Basle, Switzerland 7 June 1966.

Sculptor, painter, collagist, printmaker and poet. One of the founders of the Dada movement in Zurich, he was also involved in Surrealism and Constructivism. His investigations into biomorphism and chance were very influential in later twentieth-century art.

MAX ERNST

b. Brühl, nr Cologne 2 April 1891.

d. Paris 1 April 1976.

Painter, printmaker and sculptor. One of the main exponents of the Dada movement in Cologne, he was also a prominent figure in Surrealism. His early work was appreciated by local artists and after 1928 his international reputation grew. In 1948 he became a citizen of the United States and in 1958 one of France.

GEORGE GROSZ

b. Berlin 26 July 1893.

d. West Berlin 6 July 1959.

Painter, draughtsman and illustrator. He is most noted for his caricatures and satirical paintings and drawings. He served in World War One, although he was eventually identified as unfit for service after a short stay in a mental hospital. After World War One, his work became more hostile and at the same time idealistic, wishing for a better society. In 1915 he met John Heartfield (then Helmut Herzfeld), and the pair anglicised their names, (Grosz was originally named Georg Gross), as a protest against zealous German nationalism. A member of the Berlin Dada group, he was also involved in Communist politics. In the 1920s he was also a prominent figure in the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. In 1933 Grosz moved to America to take a teaching post in New York, and became an American citizen in 1938. He returned to Berlin in 1959, dying shortly afterwards.

RICHARD HUELSENBECK

b. Frankenau, Hessen 23 April 1892.

d. Minusio, Switzerland 20 April 1974.

Writer, amateur painter and doctor. In 1916 Huelsenbeck moved to Zurich, where he became a central figure of the Dada group. On his return to Berlin, he brought with him Dada and between 1917-22 was a central figure in the Berlin section of the movement. In 1922 he became a doctor, and in 1936, on his move to New York, he changed his name to Charles R. Hulbeck and set himself up as a psychiatrist. He returned to Europe in 1969.

RAOUL HAUSMANN

b. Vienna 12 July 1886.

d. Limoges 1 February 1971.

Photomontagist, painter, photographer, printmaker, writer and theorist. in 1900 he moved to Berlin, and later between 1918-22 was very involved in Berlin Dada, and experimented with various media in a reaction against easel painting. Between 1915-22 he was in a relationship with fellow (Dadaist) artist Hannah Höch; the pair maintained that they invented the technique of photomontage. In 1933 he fled Nazi Germany to Ibiza, and then when the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936 he moved to Prague. Several more moves occurred until he settled in Limoges in 1944.

HANNAH HÖCH

b. Gotha 1 November 1889.

d. Berlin 31 May 1978.

Painter and photomontagist. Involved in the Berlin Dada movement. Between 1915-22 she was involved with fellow (Dadaist) artist Raoul Hausmann; the pair maintained they invented the technique of photomontage. In the 1920s Höch designed patterns for materials and wallpaper, illustrated book covers and produced costume and theatre designs. Between 1926-29 she lived with Dutch author Til Brugman. Much of her work protests against the state of German politics, for example her photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany from 1919, while also addressing issues of gender. After World War Two, her work takes on a more personal feel.

GUSTAV KLUTSIS

b. Rujiena, Latvia 4 January 1895.

d. Siberia 1944.

Sculptor, painter, graphic artist, designer, teacher and photomontagist. Important figure in the Russian constructivist movement. In 1920 he joined the Communist party and between 1921-2 he experimented with various materials to utilitarian ends. The 1920s also saw him experimenting with photomontage techniques to produce agit-prop posters. Between 1924-30 he helped organise the Soviet section at the Expostion Internationale de Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.

MAN RAY

b. Philadelphia 25 August 1890.

d. Paris, 18 November 1976.

Photographer and painter. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky but adopted the name Man Ray as early as 1909. Involved in Dada and Surrealism, collaborating in 1921 with Marcel Duchamp on New York Dada (one of the movements earliest chronicles). In 1921 he moved to Paris. During the early 1920s he promoted his production of the ‘rayograph’ a method of producing images by placing objects on light sensitive paper, however during the 1920s and 1930s he was also a popular portrait painter and fashion photographer. Man Ray left Paris due to the outbreak of World War Two, and spent the war years in Los Angeles only to return to Paris in 1951, where he stayed until his death.

LÀSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

b. Bácsborsod, Hungary 20 July 1895.

d. Chicago 24 November 1946.

Painter, sculptor, photographer, designer, film-maker, theorist and teacher. Combined a mystical outlook about the relationship of man to his environment: space, time and light, with practical enterprises. In 1923 he was appointed head of the Bauhaus preliminary course and metal workshop, and between 1925-30 he co-edited fourteen Bauhaus books. Between 1929-37 he worked on various commercial design projects, spending time in London between 1935-37.

HANS RICHTER

b. Berlin 6 April 1888.

d. Minusio, Switzerland 1 February 1976.

Painter, film-maker, theorist and writer. Between 1911-14 his work was mainly influenced by Expressionism, however he soon became interested in Cubism (1914-16), and in 1916 was involved in Zurich Dada. In 1918 he met Viking Eggeling and the two moved to Berlin where they often collaborated. Between 1928-41 he worked as a film-maker. In 1941 he moved to the USA where he became a professor, and later the director of the Institute of Film Technique at City College, New York.

ALEKSANDER RODCHENKO

b. St Petersburg 23 November 1891.

d. Moscow 3 December 1956.

Painter, sculptor, designer and photographer. Involved in Russian Constructivism and the cultural debates that followed the 1917 revolution. In 1921 he rejected easel painting (although he was to resume painting in his later years), with views that can be equated with those of Dada, and concentrated on poster and furniture design, photography and film.

JAN TSCHICHOLD

b. Leipzig 2 April 1902.

d. Locarno, 11 August 1974.

Graphic designer and writer. His work can be seen as being influenced by Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923. In 1925 he was appointed to teach at the Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker in Munich. In 1933 he was arrested by the Nazis for ‘advocating radical ideas’, after his release into ‘protective custody’ he fled to Basle. A lot of his work focused on book design and in 1947 he was invited to England to redesign Penguin Books. He returned to Switzerland in 1949.

TRISTAN TZARA

b. Moinesti, Romania 16 April 1896.

d. Paris 24 December 1963.

Writer. In 1915 he move to Zurich to study philosophy and founded the Dada movement, himself composing Dada poems and the Dada Manifesto of 1918. In 1920 he joined Francis Picabia in Paris. Between 1930-35 he contributed to the Surrealist movement, but began to move away from the movement as he became more involved in Communism.