John Heartfield (June 19, 1891–April 26, 1968) is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld. He chose to call himself Heartfield in 1916, to criticize the rabid nationalism and anti-British sentiment prevalent in Germany during World War I.
In 1918 Heartfield began at the Berlin Dada scene, and the Communist Party of Germany. He was dismissed from the Reichswehr film service on account of his support for the strike that followed the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. With George Grosz, he founded Die Pleite, a satirical magazine. After meeting Bertolt Brecht, who was to have a profound influence on his art, Heartfield developed photomontage into a form of political and artistic representation. He worked for two communist publications - the daily Die Rote Fahne, and the weekly Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ).
In 1933, after the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Heartfield relocated to Czechoslovakia, where he continued his photomontage work for the AIZ (which was published in exile); in 1938, fearing a German takeover of his host country, he left for England. He settled in East Germany and Berlin after World War II.
His photomontages satirising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi symbols such as the swastika in order to undermine their propaganda message.
