Dadaist Artist Hannah Höch

Art Herstory:

German bisexual artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) is best known for her photomontages, though she also made drawings and paintings. Between 1912 and 1920, she studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts) and the Unterrichtsanstalt des königlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums (School of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts) in Berlin.

The Dada movement flourished between 1916 and 1922 in Zurich, New York, Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, and Paris and as members of the Berlin Dada, Hannah Höch developed her art of photomontage (photographic images collaged onto paper) as a tool of artistic commentary on the Western society.

In 1926 Höch entered into a relationship with the Dutch writer and linguist Til Brugman (ca 1888-1958). They remained together for nine years, living in The Hague from 1926 to 1929, then in Berlin. The two women collaborated on some projects, including a book, Scheingehacktes (1935), for which Hannah made the images and Til the text.

When the Hitler regime seized power. Hannah Höch was defamed as a “Cultural Bolshevist” in 1934 and prohibited from exhibiting her work. In 1935 she separated from Till Burgmann. During the 1940s and 1950s, Hannah Höch explored non-objective abstraction. Between 1963 and 1973, she returned to images of women as her central theme. However, Nature was a lifelong love and inspiration to her. Her garden house in Heiligensee near Berlin, where she lived for 40 years, is now protected by the German Stiftung Denkmalschutz as a cultural heritage home.

Read more about the men in Hannah Höch’s life and her involvement with the women’s movement in the 1920s at Wikipedia: Hannah Höch

Selected Books

Some of the latest monographs and exhibition catalogues about Hannah Höch’s works are:

Schrankenlose Freiheit für Hannah Höch
by Cara Schweitzer
Publisher: Osburg Verlag (May 2011)
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3940731641
ISBN-13: 978-3940731647

Hannah Hoch: Picture Book
by Hannah Hoch and Gunda Luyken
Publisher: The Green Box Kunstedition (15 Aug 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3941644130
ISBN-13: 978-3941644137

Hannah Höch: Aller Anfang ist DADA!
Museum Jean Tinguely Basel; Hannah Hoch; Berlinische Galerie; Ralf Burmeister
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag (April 2007)
ISBN-10: 3775719199
ISBN-13: 978-3775719193

Hannah Hoch: Album
by Gunda Luyken
Publisher: Hatje Cantz; Bilingual edition (1 Jun 2004)
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3775714278
ISBN-13: 978-3775714273