La Poupée (The Doll)

Dolls and mannequins like Hans Bellmer’s La Poupée were common subjects for surrealist artists who saw them as expressive of forbidden sensuality and sexuality. For Bellmer, however, the dolls may have taken on a more personal and political significance, and they became a lifetime obsession, featuring in his drawings and sculptures as well. He began making his own papier-mâché figures in the early 1930s, around the same time that Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany. Bellmer’s inspiration may have come from a number of different sources, including childhood traumas, Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffman (1881), Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), or Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. With their mismatched and twisted body parts that could be dismantled and reassembled in many combinations, the dolls have been interpreted as acts of political defiance against Nazi Germany’s “cult of physical perfection.”