Raoul Hausmann – Painter

During these five years, Raoul Hausmann painted. He painted prolifically after a 40-year hiatus. For the first time, his work, which until now has remained little-known, is the subject of a dedicated exhibition at the museum.

Born in Vienna in 1886, Raoul Hausmann was the son of an academic painter who trained him in his early years. He continued his studies at a classical painting and sculpture academy in Berlin, before discovering the Expressionist avant-garde in 1912 and devoting himself to a free, colorful pictorial practice that reflected his inner vision.

His turning point came in 1918 with the creation of Dada Berlin, a radical and provocative movement of which he was a founding member. Dada’s aim was to break away from established conventions and create a new visual language, which meant moving away from traditional mediums, starting with painting. Raoul Hausmann contributed to the creation of photomontage and phonetic poetry, and committed himself to numerous plastic and literary experiments.

In 1959, Raoul Hausmann, who had been living in relative anonymity in Limoges for fifteen years, resumed painting. He was reacting to the abstract painting of the Second Paris School, which prevailed at the time. Over the next five years, he produced a hundred paintings, around thirty of which are now housed in the Fonds Hausmann at the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne – château de Rochechouart.

The exhibition explores the artist’s fast evolution in the pictorial field, from dark, tormented paintings to more analytical works, always produced with the swiftness of a spontaneous gesture.

The exhibition also features a number of gouaches and a photograph produced by Raoul Hausmann during the same period, reflecting the plurality of his creative output, nourished by a play on language and visual innovation.

“The world has need of new tendencies in poeting and paintry”, as he declared at the time.