Hans Bellmer was born in 1902 in Kattowicz, Poland. He studied under
George Grosz in Berlin. This
surrealist artist's work consisted most famously of photographs (also paintings, drawings, etchings and engravings) of female dolls, which he depicted wholly or partially nude and in suggestive, often disturbing poses. They were headless, footless, armless, skewed and tortured. With the help of his brother, an engineer, he made the "poupées" (dolls) that he photographed; some of them with exagerated sexual characteristics. Denounced by the
Nazis as a
degenerate, he fled to Paris and fell in with the Surrealists there (he did some collaborative work with
Man Ray). He died there in 1975.
See the biography
Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy Of Anxiety, by
Sue Taylor.