Blog Galerie Priska Pasquer

Heinz Hajek-Halke has a major retrospective in Munich at the Versicherungs Kammer, Bayern (until Nov. 2):
“Heinz Hajek-Halke. Form aus Licht und Schatten. Retrospektive”
With 150 photographs and glass negatives the exhibition gives a comprehensive overview about the oeuvre of Heinz Hajek-Halke with his early nude photographs and works for magazines, his experimental montages as well as his light graphics of the the 1950s and 1960s.

Galerie Priska Pasquer had exhibited his experimental photographs at the gallery in 2002 and we were also involved in the organization of a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2002 and in publishing the first comprehensive monograph about the artist in 2006. (See book details and a preview at Steidl Publisher.)

Heinz Hajek-Halke is one of the undiscovered geniuses of early twentieth century experimental photography. He surmounted the purely documentary nature of photography in the turbulent 1920s and developed a variety of aesthetically challenging photo-manipulation techniques which he applied to both personal and commissioned advertising work.
His techniques were the innovative forerunner of digital photography and web design.
[Quote: Heinz Hajek-Halke. Artist, Anarchist. With essays by Klaus Honnef, Priska Pasquer, Michael Ruetz, Alain Sayag and Rainer Stamm. Goettingen, 2006]

On occasion of the current exhibition a new monograph about the late works of Heinz Hajek-Halke has been published: Phantasie und Traum. Das lichtgraphische Spätwerk von Heinz Hajek-Halke.

Heinz Hajek-Halke short biography:
Heinz Hajek-Halke, born in Berlin in 1898, spent part of his childhood in Argentina. He worked as a photo editor, press photographer and commercial artist, concentrating almost from the start on montage techniques. During World War II he lived quietly and photographed small animal life-forms. In 1949 he became a member of the German group fotoform and took part in the first of two subjektive fotografie exhibitions. Hajek-Halke was appointed lecturer in photography and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in 1955. During his lifetime he published two books, Experimentelle Fotografie and Lichtgrafik. He died in Berlin in 1983.

Images: © Nachlass Heinz Hajek-Halke, Sammlung Michael Ruetz, Agentur Focus