Hans Bellmer

I was recently introduced to Hans Bellmer, who's doll projects are fascinating. He was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer's doll project is also said to have been catalysed by a series of events in his personal life. In his works, Bellmer explicitly sexualized the doll as a young girl.