Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann, born in 1886 (12 July) in Vienna (Austria), lived in Berlin beginning in 1900, and deceased in Limoges (France) in 1971 (1 Feb.), is counted among the most important artists of the historical avant-garde of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of Dada Berlin in 1918 together with Richard Hulsenbeck and Frantz Jung. After the Dada movement, he undertook research in optophonetics, and in 1926 he began his autobiographical novel, "Hyle," which he finished around 1955 in Limoges. At the beginning of the 1930s, photography became his preferred means of expression, with views of the Baltic Sea, the island of Sylt, and numerous nudes on the beach. From 1937-38, he lived in Czechoslovakia, where he began more research on photography. He began a study on that subject and hoped to publish his research on optophonetic works with Moholy-Nagy. In 1944 he moved to Limoges and, thanks to a parcel of photographic paper sent by Moholoy-Nagy, he made his first photograms. Then he returned to work in photography, photomontage, and sound poetry. From 1959 to 1964 painting became one of the most important aspects of his artistic production, which he later transformed into pictographic writing.