Katharina Günther – författare

An international group of experts recount the history of Dada from its beginning in 1916 through to the 1930s. The volume’s focus is on the movement’s political motives and social activity, which served to unite this heterogeneous group of visual artists, writers and figures from the theatre. Emerging from the experience of the First World War, Dada artists issued strong warnings about the rise of the Nazi dictatorship. The book vividly demonstrates how vital artistic voices can be in resisting inhumane and anti-democratic tendencies. Artists: Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Erwin Blumenfeld, Paul Citroen, Otto Dix, Otto Griebel, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Marta Hegemann, Emmy Hennings, Hannah Höch, Heinrich Hoerle, Richard Huelsenbeck, Franz Jung, Walter Mehring, Rudolf Schlichter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

The British painter Francis Bacon (1909–1992) is famed for his idiosyncratic mode of depicting the human figure. Thirty years after his death, his working methods remain underexplored. New research on the Francis Bacon Studio Archive at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, sheds light on the genesis of his works, namely the photographic source material he collected in his studios, on which he consistently based his paintings. The book brings together the artist’s pictorial springboards for the first time, delineating and interpreting recurring patterns and methods in his preparatory work and adoption of photographic material. In addition, it correctly locates ‘chance’ as a driving force in Bacon’s working method and qualifies the significance of photography for the painter. German Photo Book Award 23/24, Gold in the category Text Volume Photo Theory