Front view
Inv. No.S-1205
ArtistHerbert Bayerborn 1900 in Haag am Hausruck, Austriadied 1985 in Montecito, Calif., USA
Title

"Bone Breaker"

from the edition: "10 fotomontagen 1929–1936, mappe 1" Galerie Klihm, Munich
Year1931 / 1969
Medium

photo collage, gelatin silver print

Dimensions33 x 25 cm
Edition32/40
Signature

signed, dated and numbered (pencil) on recto, title (pencil) in another hand on verso

Comment

As a persiflage of excessive Germanicity, Bayer uses the visual language of Fritz Lang or reminds of opera postcards, such as Karl Bellach's "Brunhilde" with its nowadays unwanted comedy.
(Fritz Simak, 2011)

Herbert Bayer's works pose fundamental questions about the mode of representation – representational or abstract – and lead beyond a mere depiction of reality. This also corresponds to Bayer's view that an artist "should not imitate nature, but create his own spiritual world alongside nature".1 Herbert Bayer's artistic approach harks back to the 1920s and thus to his time as a student and teacher at the Bauhaus2 in Weimar and later in Dessau. As a budding artist, he first immersed himself in Kandinsky's work Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art) and learned the basics of color theory in a preliminary course with Johannes Itten. This taught him the fundamentals of the structure and composition of forms and colors.
On stylistic influences of Bauhaus artists, he reports: "Most of us were filled with romantic expressionism. Dadaism corresponded to our rejection of any sanctified order. The work of the Stijl group, attractive in its purity, had brief formalist influence. Constructivism contributed its part to the artistic turmoil, but the world of machine production, with its own facts and functions, already determined the image of the future."3
Through his photographic experiments, which included photomontages, Bayer found a way out of purely pictorial representation. He used the camera as what he called a "subjective means of design"4. In the resulting "dynamic concepts,"5 the artist was able to depict an object in a "multitude of viewpoints."5
(Brigitte Reutner-Doneus, Lentos, Linz, read the original article in German here, translated with AI – deepl)

 

1 

  1. Herbert Bayer, Visuelle Kommunikation, Architektur, Malerei. Das Werk des Künstlers in Europa und USA, Ravensburg 1967, p. 203.
  2. 2
    Ibid., p. 10: „Die frühen Jahre am Bauhaus wurden das grundlegende Erlebnis für mein späteres Werk.“ (The early years at the Bauhaus became the fundamental experience for my later work.)
  3. 3
  4. Ibid.
  5. 4
  6. Ibid., p. 11.
  7. 5
  8. Ibid., p. 10.
S-1205, "Bone Breaker"
Herbert Bayer, "Bone Breaker", 1931
S-1205, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1205, Back view
Herbert Bayer, "Bone Breaker", 1931
S-1205, Back view
S-1205, Vergl. Karl Bellach, „Brunhilde ('Walküre')“, 1902, Sammlung Simak 2702.
Herbert Bayer, "Bone Breaker", 1931
S-1205, Vergl. Karl Bellach, „Brunhilde ('Walküre')“, 1902, Sammlung Simak 2702.
S-1205, Decla-UFA Film, „Die Niebelungen
Herbert Bayer, "Bone Breaker", 1931
S-1205, Decla-UFA Film, „Die Niebelungen" (Regie: Fritz Lang), „Siegfried“, 1923, Sammlung Simak 1764.
S-1203, Herbert Bayer, "Profil en face", 1929
Herbert Bayer, "Profil en face", 1929
more infoS-1203, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1204, Herbert Bayer, "Look into Life", 1931
Herbert Bayer, "Look into Life", 1931
more infoS-1204, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1206, Herbert Bayer, "The Language of Letters", 1931
Herbert Bayer, "The Language of Letters", 1931
more infoS-1206, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1207, Herbert Bayer, "Good night Marie", 1932
Herbert Bayer, "Good night Marie", 1932
more infoS-1207, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1208, Herbert Bayer, "Creation", 1932
Herbert Bayer, "Creation", 1932
more infoS-1208, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1209, Herbert Bayer, "Monument", 1932
Herbert Bayer, "Monument", 1932
more infoS-1209, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1210, Herbert Bayer, "The Kiss", 1932
Herbert Bayer, "The Kiss", 1932
more infoS-1210, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien
S-1211, Herbert Bayer, "In Search of Time Past", 1959
Herbert Bayer, "In Search of Time Past", 1959
more infoS-1211, Front view
© Herbert Bayer Stiftung / Bildrecht Wien