Christian Schad

(b Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, 21 Aug 1894; d Keilberg, nr Aschaffenburg, 25 Feb 1982). German painter, collagist, printmaker and photographer. He studied briefly at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste in Munich (1913-14) and in 1913 began to make Expressionist woodcuts, which were published in magazines such as Die Aktion (Berlin), Die Weissen Bl?tter (Leipzig) and Sirius (Zurich). From 1915 to 1920 he lived in Zurich and Geneva, where he was associated with the DADA movement. He continued creating woodcuts but also made reliefs, paintings and collages from newspaper cuttings and other printed papers. At the same time he became interested in abstracting photography and using it in a more metaphoric way. In 1918, while living in Geneva, he created his first 'schadographs', such as Untitled (Fish; 1918; New York, MOMA), contact prints of collages and objects on photosensitive paper. Like Man Ray's rayographs and Moholy-Nagy's photograms, these cameraless photographs reproduced the negative image of the textures placed on them, creating a new form of representation.

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Schad, Christian (1894-1982), German experimental photographer and painter. He became interested in photography at school, before entering the Munich Academy in 1913. Between 1915 and 1920, after brief military service, he lived as a painter and graphic artist in Switzerland, where he cultivated contacts with Dada artists. In the course of experiments with ‘found objects’ he discovered cameraless photography and created c.30 works later known as Schadographs. In the 1920s, in Italy and then back in Germany, he concentrated on painting, becoming one of the leading exponents of Neue Sachlichkeit and magic realism. But in 1960-3 he rediscovered the photogram, creating a substantial body of late work in the medium.

— Ulrich Rüter

Bibliography

• Schad, N., and Auer, A. (eds.), Schadographie: Die Kraft des Lichts (1999)

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