John Heartfield: Pioneer in Photomontage

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.