Details

Exhibitions: Ella Bergmann-Michel. Collagen, Malerei, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik, Fotos, Reklame, Entwürfe, Sprengel Museum, Hannover 1990, cat. no.58, with col. illus. p. 41.
Provenance: collection of Abraham L. And Margit Chanin, New York; Karl & Faber, 4.12.2001, lot 411; Barry Friedman Collection, New York; Christie’s, “Barry Friedman: The eclectic Eye”, New York 26.5.2014, lot 109; private collection, Munich.

Descrizione

Alongside her husband Robert Michel, Kurt Schwitters, Willi Baumeister and László Moholy-Nagy, Ella Bergmann-Michel, known to friends as EBM for short, was one of the most important protagonists of the avant-garde and a pioneer of collage. The artist couple Bergmann/Michel met in 1917 while studying at the University of Fine Arts in Weimar and from then on worked closely together for the rest of their lives. For a short time, they worked at the newly founded Bauhaus, but soon settled in the “Schmelz” in the Taunus, an old paint mill in Michel’s birthplace, which they later called the “Heimatmuseum of Modern Art”. They became close friends with Johannes Mohlzahn and Kurt Schwitters as well as the photographers Martha Hoepffner and Ilse Bing. In addition to her extremely varied artistic work, Ella Bergmann-Michel worked as a commercial artist, photographer and documentary filmmaker and produced various interior designs. In the mid-1920s, she was involved in the social reform movement “das neue frankfurt”, where she headed the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für neuen Film/Liga für unabhängigen Film” together with Paul Seligmann from 1930. Due to the political developments of the 1930s, the artist couple largely withdrew from the public art scene. To support their family, Robert Michel ran a fish farm at the Schmelzmühle, while Ella Bergmann-Michel farmed and reared small livestock. The couple only resumed their artistic activities after the end of the Second World War. Thanks to the “Pioneers of Collage” exhibition shown in Leverkusen in 1963, the life’s work of the artist couple Bergmann/Michel was rediscovered and publicised. After her time at the academy, during which she created numerous expressionist-influenced woodcuts, Ella Bergmann-Michel produced her first dadaist, futuristic works as of 1917/18, material pictures glued together from found objects, so-called assemblages, and paper collages. These works are mostly dominated by circular forms that are clearly reminiscent of wheel mechanics. This certainly makes EBM the (to this day mostly unrecognised) pioneer of both the image collage technique and the wheel motif, which can only be found a short time later in the works of her husband Robert Michel and Kurt Schwitters. The fish motif that dominates this early collage “Fischlein rot, Fischlein rot, stech dich tot” from 1918 is an important and often recurring motif in EBM’s oeuvre. It can also be found, for example, in the collage “Meine Fische” (My fish) created in the same year and in a linocut from 1920 (cf. exhib. cat. Hannover 1990, cat. nos. 53 and 57). Years later, Bergmann-Michel even made a documentary film about “Fishing in the Rhön” together with her husband Robert Michel. In the collage “Fischlein rot”, EBM combines both cut-out fish illustrations and hand-drawn fish and also adds her signature with a small fish. The text line “Fischlein rot, Fischlein rot, stech dich tot” added to the collage refers to the artist’s book “Die träumenden Knaben” by Oskar Kokoschka, published in 1908. Fritz Waerndorfer, director of the Wiener Werkstätte, had commissioned Kokoschka to illustrate a children’s book. With its eight ornamental colour lithographs in bright colours, the finished book marked the transition from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. In 1917, Kurt Wolff Verlag in Leipzig published a second edition (using leftover stock from the first edition by the Wiener Werkstätte). It is possible that Ella Bergmann-Michel owned a copy of “The Dreaming Boys”, which inspired her to create her own works.