Belling was born in Berlin where his earliest training involved sculptural modelling and, from 1909, designing the sets for Max Reinhardt's Berlin theatre. In 1912 he went to the Akademische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where he began to produce cubist sculpture. In 1913 he travelled in Belgium, England and France. During the 1st World War, Belling served in the Air Corps in Berlin-Aldershof, working on model development. His experience of war lead to various works tending towards Expressionism including 'Verwundete' - 'Wounded' (1915), 'Kampf' - 'War' (1916) and 'Der Flieger' - 'The Pilot' (1916). In 1918 he joined the anti academy group Arbeitsrat für Kunst and co-founded the November Group, which aimed to take the ideas behind the November Revolution into art. His work entitled 'Dreiklang' of 1919 moved towards principles enunciated by the Bauhaus movement, which started that year, in its combination of different artistic media - painting, sculpture and architecture - and its integration of form and space. Also in 1919, he held his first solo exhibition in Berlin. Belling became a member of the Prussian Academy of Art in 1931 and then left to teach in a private art school in New York in 1935. After a year teaching in Istanbul, in 1936, however, he decided to emigrate there and taught at the Art Academy of Istanbul until 1952. Proclaimed a degenerate artist by the Nazis, Belling held his first exhibition in Germany after the 2nd World War in Hagen in 1956. In 1966 he moved back to Germany and settled in Krailling, near Munich, where he died in 1972