Raoul Hausmann treated the printed page as raw material. Newspaper photographs, advertising type, numbers and stray letters were all things to cut out and rearrange until they said something new. For designers, Raoul Hausmann is a study in how far type and image can be pushed before a layout stops reading, and how much energy sits right at that edge.
This guide has no images. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art hold works by Hausmann or portraits of him, but none is flagged public domain or CC0, so his works are described here in words, with the museum that holds each one. They remain in copyright, and nothing here suggests they are free to reuse. For cleared prints, posters and lettering by other artists, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Raoul Hausmann?
The Met records him as Austrian, born in Vienna in 1886 and died in Limoges, France, in 1971; the Art Institute of Chicago gives the same years, and the Austria-Forum encyclopedia also places his death in Limoges.
The Museum of Modern Art’s photography research timeline places his role in Berlin Dada between 1918 and 1923. In Berlin he wrote, performed, edited and made pictures. He co-founded the magazine Der Dada with Johannes Baader, and he helped organise the 1920 First International Dada Fair in Berlin alongside George Grosz and John Heartfield, whose own photomontages are covered in our guide to John Heartfield.
His partner for much of this period was the artist Hannah Höch. The Art Story dates their relationship from 1915 to 1922, and the Whitechapel Gallery’s exhibition texts on Höch give the same end date. The Met owns a brush-and-ink portrait drawing of her by Hausmann, dated about 1920. For her side of the story, see our guide to Hannah Höch.
After Dada he turned increasingly to photography. In an essay for the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the critic Jean-François Chevrier describes roughly a decade in which photography was Hausmann’s main work, split into a German phase from 1927 to 1933 and a later phase on Ibiza. The Berlinische Galerie’s finding aid for his papers records that he left for Ibiza in 1933 and stayed until 1936; Chevrier writes that he was later forced to leave the island and found refuge in Limoges, where, according to the Austria-Forum, he lived from 1944 until his death.
Key Raoul Hausmann works and dates
1918, fmsbw. A poster poem made only of letters. The Centre Pompidou, whose Musée National d’Art Moderne holds it, says Kurt Schwitters drew on its sounds when he developed his long sound poem, the Ursonate.
About 1919–20, Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time). An assemblage built on a hairdresser’s wooden wig head, now at the Centre Pompidou. Britannica dates it 1919–20 and lists the attached objects, including a tape measure, a wooden ruler, a small tin cup and a spectacles case; the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition catalogue dates it about 1920.
1920, Tatlin at Home. A photomontage. The design writer Rick Poynor notes that it hangs on the wall in press photographs of the Dada Fair, and reports that the original, credited to Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, has since gone missing.
1923 or 1923–24, ABCD. A self-portrait photomontage. Britannica dates it 1923 and describes his face at the centre with letters clenched in his teeth; the Centre Pompidou dates it 1923–24 and describes a mix of figures, objects, letters and numbers. The Met holds a small gelatin silver print of the work, about 15 by 10 centimetres, dated to the 1920s.
About 1930–31, photographs. The Met holds prints from his photographic years, including [Window with Curtains, View of Garden with Figures] (about 1931), a print under 8 centimetres wide.
In 2025 the Berlinische Galerie staged Raoul Hausmann: Vision. Provocation. Dada., with a catalogue from Hatje Cantz. According to the gallery’s press kit, it looks after his papers up to 1933, while his photographic archive and around 700 works are at the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne in Rochechouart, France.
What to look at: letters as shapes and sounds
Type that refuses to be words. The Centre Pompidou describes Hausmann’s “optophonetic” poems, begun in 1918, as made to be taken in by the eye and the ear at once. In a poster poem like fmsbw the letters do not spell anything; they are there to be pronounced and looked at. Each change of weight or size is a cue for the voice: louder, longer, sharper. A designer reading it sees a score, with typography doing the job of musical notation.
Mixed fonts as texture. Accounts of Der Dada stress its jumble of typefaces and sizes on a single page. The effect is closer to a wall of torn posters than to a book. Headlines collide, lines run at angles, and white space appears in odd pockets rather than generous margins. Yet the contrast between heavy and light type still steers the eye.
Colour coding. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues under his name a complete set of the four issues of the review Mécano (1922–23), each printed on a different coloured sheet: yellow, blue, white and red. It is a reminder that a series can be held together by one simple system, a colour per issue, while the content inside stays wild.
Photomontage technique: cut, collide, centre
Photomontage means building a picture from pieces of existing photographs, usually cut from magazines and newspapers, often with printed type added. According to The Art Story, Hausmann and Höch said they found the idea on a Baltic holiday in 1918, while Grosz and Heartfield claimed it for themselves; credit was argued over from the start.
Three habits recur in the works described above.
A strong centre. In ABCD, as Britannica describes it, his own face anchors the composition while everything else swirls around it. However crowded the montage, one clear focal point stops it dissolving into noise.
Scale jumps. Photomontage lets a head sit beside a machine part of the same size, or a single letter tower over a figure. Those jumps in scale are what make the image feel unreal and alert.
Objects as symbols. Mechanical Head is a montage in three dimensions. A ruler, a tape measure and a cup turn a blank wig head into a portrait of someone who thinks only in numbers.
Raoul Hausmann’s photography
The later photographs are quieter than the montages, and that contrast is useful. Met records include small prints of windows, curtains, gardens and figures. Chevrier’s essay treats the German and Ibiza phases as a body of work in its own right. Even in this calmer mode he frames tightly, crops hard and lets light and pattern carry the picture, the same instinct for cutting that drove the collages.
Two photographers recorded Hausmann himself. The Met holds August Sander’s portrait [Raoul Hausmann] of 1927–28, and the Cleveland Museum of Art holds Sander’s The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, Sitting of 1930 (printed 1974). Neither is public domain.
How designers can borrow Raoul Hausmann’s ideas
Treat letters as image. Set a single word or sound in several weights and sizes and arrange it for rhythm, not reading. Our lettering collection offers public-domain examples to sample from.
Design for the voice. Ask how a headline would sound read aloud, and let size and weight follow the stress. It suits campaigns built around a chant or slogan.
Anchor the chaos. If you build a busy collage, give it one face, one object or one block of colour that the eye can return to. Hausmann’s ABCD shows that a montage can be dense and still readable.
Systematise the series. Like the coloured sheets of Mécano, give a run of issues, episodes or products one simple rule, such as one colour each, and keep the variety inside.
Use real fragments, legally. Today the safest source material for montage is public-domain imagery or your own photography. Our guide to poster design principles covers hierarchy and contrast for when the fragments are in place.
Frequently asked questions
What is Raoul Hausmann known for?
For his work in Berlin Dada from 1918: photomontages such as ABCD and Tatlin at Home, the assemblage Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time), sound poems such as fmsbw, and the magazine Der Dada.
Did Raoul Hausmann invent photomontage?
The claim is disputed. Hausmann and Hannah Höch dated their discovery to 1918, while George Grosz and John Heartfield made a rival claim, as The Art Story notes.
What is an optophonetic poem?
Hausmann’s term for a poem designed to be both seen and heard. Letters are set in varied sizes and weights so that the typography works as instructions for performance.
Are Raoul Hausmann’s works public domain?
No museum used for this guide flags his works as public domain or CC0, and he died in 1971, so none are shown here. Check each museum’s rights statement before any reuse.
