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Erwin Blumenfeld: Dada, Collage and Photography
Press Release
An exhibition of collages, drawings and photomontages by Erwin Blumenfeld will open at the Rachel Adler Gallery on October 27 and will continue through November 26, 1988. The majority of the works, which date from the twenties, were included in a retrospective organized by the Israel Museum in 1981, and all are on view here for the first time in the United States.
Blumenfeld, renowned as photographer for such major magazines as "Vogue", "Life", and "Harper's Bazaar", was throughout his life inspired by the Dada movement and it's "spirit of 'anything goes'". It was shortly after his exile to Holland, in 1918 from his birthplace Berlin, that he established a Dutch Dada branch where none had existed before. In 1921 he married Lena Citroën (Paul Citroën's cousin) and found himself having to work at a variety of jobs which did not suit his temperament. It was principally during these 20 years in Holland that "Dadaism was a good vehicle from which to launch darts at all those aspects of society for which he felt contempt. he was intensely disillusioned with capitalism, nationalism, communism.all the isms except Dadaism and anarchism." writes Yorick Blumenfeld in his introductory essay to the illustrated catalogue for the exhibition.
Futher on the author writes "The role of chance and anti-rationalism in these collages were self-evident. Some of the collages seemed unfinished, as if he had lost patience or interest and had wandered off to eat some fresh Dutch herring. The collages reveal his extraordinary fantasy, his cutting irony, and his whimsy. The works in this show are full of grotesque distortions, weird juxtapositions, and improbable combinations of figures seemingly floating in space. the point of the works was to further the spirit of anarchy and to let the message be direct and immediate".
Erwin Blumenfeld |
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Erwin Blumenfeld:
Dada, Collage and
Photography
essay by Yorick
Blumenfeld (1988)
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