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This medal has
been designed by Ronald Searle and minted in
John Heartfield (19 June 1891, Berlin – 26 April
1968, East Berlin) is the anglicized name of the German
photomontage artist Helmut
Herzfeld. He chose to call himself Heartfield in 1916, to criticize
the rabid nationalism and
anti-British sentiment prevalent in
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, (b. 3 March 1920, Cambridge, England) is an influential English artist and cartoonist. Best known as the creator of St Trinian's School (the subject of several books and five full-length films). he is also the co-author (with Geoffrey Willans) of the Molesworth tetralogy. He is 88 years of age.
av. The portrait
of John Heartfield
rv. The satire of a Nazi-official
diameter
– 68 mm (ca 2¾ “)
weight
– 275.10 gr, (9.70 oz)
metal – bronze, gold plated, artistic patina
John Heartfield
In 1918 Heartfield joined the Berlin Dada club and
the Communist Party of Germany. He would
turn out to be highly active in the Dada movement, organizing the First
International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920. In 1919, he was dismissed from the Reichswehr film
service on account of his support for the strike that
followed the assassination of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg. With George
Grosz, he founded Die Pleite, a
satirical magazine. After meeting Bertolt
Brecht in 1924, who was to have an influence on his art,
Heartfield developed photomontage into a form of political and artistic
expression. He worked for two communist publications: the daily Die Rote Fahne and the weekly Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), the
latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered.
In 1933, after the National Socialists came to
power in Germany, Heartfield relocated to Czechoslovakia, where he
continued his photomontage work for the AIZ (which was published in
exile); in 1938, fearing a German takeover of his host country, he left for
England, living in Hampstead. He
settled in East
Germany and Berlin after World War II, in 1954, and
worked closely with theater directors such as Benno
Besson and Wolfgang
Langhoff at Berliner
Ensemble and Deutsches
Theater.
In 1967 he visited Britain and began preparing a
retrospective exhibition of his work, "photomontages", which was
subsequently completed by his widow Gertrude and the Deutsche Akademie der
Künste, and shown at the ICA in London in 1969.
In 2005, Tate
Britain held an exhibition of his photomontage pieces.
His photomontages satirising Adolf
Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi
symbols such as the swastika in order
to undermine their propaganda message.
One of his more famous pieces, made in 1935 entitled Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle! (English: Hurray, the butter is gone!) was published on the frontpage of the AIZ in 1935. A parody of the aesthetics of propaganda, the photomontage shows a family at a kitchen table, where a nearby portrait of Hitler hangs and the wallpaper is emblazoned with swastikas. The family — mother, father, old woman, young man, baby, and dog — are attempting to eat pieces of metal, such as chains, bicycle handlebars, and rifles. Below, the title is written in large letters, in addition to a quote by Hermann Göring during food shortage. Translated, the quote reads: "Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat".
Ronald
William Fordham Searle
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in
In 1961 he moved to
His work had a considerable influence on later
cartoonists, including Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In 2005 he was the subject of a long BBC documentary on his life and work by Russell
Davies. In 2007 he was
decorated with