John Heartfield

Born Helmut Herzfeld in Berlin in 1891, John Heartfield became a pioneering visual artist who wielded art as a political weapon. His early life was marked by instability; his parents, a socialist writer and political activist, disappeared in 1899, leaving him and his siblings abandoned. He later studied art in Munich and Charlottenburg, initially influenced by commercial designers. Heartfield's transformation into a political artist began in earnest during World War I. To pr…