John Heartfield

About

John Heartfield, born Helmut Franz Josef Herzfeld, was a pioneering German artist renowned for inventing photomontage as a political weapon against fascism, particularly the Nazis. Born into poverty in Berlin-Schmargendorf to a Jewish socialist writer father, he anglicized his name in 1916 as a protest against German nationalism during World War I. He studied arts and crafts in Munich and Berlin, worked as a commercial artist, and became art editor for Malik-Verlag, his brother Wieland's publishing house. Heartfield joined the German Communist Party in 1918 and co-founded the Berlin Dada Club with George Grosz and others, destroying his pre-war art to focus on socially and politically engaged work. He innovated in book design, stage sets, and posters, but gained fame for satirical photomontages critiquing war, capitalism, and Hitler, published in AIZ and Volks-Illustrierte.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Dadaist political photomontage satirizing fascism and capitalism