Florence Henri (1893–1982)

Biography by Dr. Birgit Bosold

Florence Henri, o.T., 1929, Lesbian Legacies #1 Grace of Desire, Berlin 2025. Courtesy: Frac ile-de-france, Archive Florence Henri / Galleria Martini & Ronchetti and Scherben (c) Max Eulitz VG Bild-Kunst.

Above all, what I want with photography is to construct
the image as I do with painting.
The volumes, lines, shadow and light
must obey my will and express what
I want them to say. All this must be subject
to the strict control of the composition,
as my aim is not to explain the world or explain my thoughts.
– Florence Henri

Florence Henri’s Biography

Florence Henri (1893–1982) is considered one of the key figures of the “New Vision“ movement. Widely recognized as an artist by her contemporaries during the 1920s and 1930s, she fell into relative obscurity after World War II. Born in New York and raised in Italy, she moved to Berlin in 1912 to study painting. It was there that she met her long-time partner, Margarete Schall (1896–1939). In the mid-1920s, she relocated to Paris to continue her studies at the Académie Moderne. Whether she ever met Cahun and Moore is undocumented but not unlikely.

A stay at the Bauhaus Dessau in 1927 marked Henri’s turn toward photography, inspired by László and Lucia Moholy-Nagy. Back in Paris, she opened her own photography studio and taught, among others, Gisèle Freund and Lisette Model. In Henri’s compositions, traditional ideas of space and perspective dissolve; everyday objects balls, dishes, fruit are transformed into charged elements of a surreal visual language. In doing so, she transposed central impulses of contemporary painting into a photographic medium that had until then been largely documentary.

Especially in her portraits and nudes often featuring female friends Henri made use of mirrors and complex perspectives, subtly exploring the fluidity of desire and identity. Her famous 1928 self-portrait, sometimes ironically referred to as “woman with balls”, became an iconic work.

Although Henri lived to see the beginnings of a renewed interest in her work during the 1980s, it is only in more recent years that she has begun to receive the recognition she long deserved.

Related Link

Lesbian Legacies – Kunstraum Scherben’s three-part exhibition series offers a fascinating perspective on the role of lesbian artists in art history.