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Artist or Maker: Hans Bellmer (1902-1975)
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Provenance: Bihl-Bellmer family (estate of the artist).
Ubu Gallery (Adam Boxer), New York.
Acquired from the above in 1998 by the present owner.
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Exhibited: Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Hans Bellmer, photographe, December 1983 - February 1984, nos. 87 & 169 (illustrated pp. 78 (a) & 138 (b)). New York, International Center of Photography, Behind closed doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer, March - June 2001.
New York, Zwirner and Wirth, The proper meaning, November - December 2001.
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Literature: W. & N. Copley Foundation, Bellmer, no. 13 (a) & no. 4 (b).
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
Bellmer's La Mitrailleuse en Etat de Grace (The Machine-Gun in a State of Grace) was an extraordinary three-foot high mantis-like construction that the artist made in 1937. Assembled from broom-handles, metal rods and erotic doll-like parts, the movable sculpture was an off-shoot from his famous doll that intermingled eroticism and mechanics in a deeply unnerving and provocative way. Similar to the doll, the 'Machine Gun' was movable into a variety of positions, each one bizarrely evocative and often troubling in the manner of a Sadean fantasy. This aspect of Bellmer's work appealed greatly to the Surrealists and La Mitrailleuse was exhibited in 1937 at three International Exhibitions of Surrealism held in Paris, New York and Japan.
A composite of weaponry and erotic form that mixes sensuality and aggression into a sexualised whole La Mitrailleuse has also been understood as a fierce critique of Fascistic militarism and a profound aesthetic assault on the idealised notion of the human form then being propagated by the National Socialists in Germany.
These three painted photographs of the original construction are among the only remaining documents of this now lost work which disappeared after Bellmer left Germany for Paris in 1938. In 1961 Bellmer created a replica that is now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Outlining two different poses of this anthropomorphic gun these painted photographs evidently served as preparations for larger painted representations such as the large painted print owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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