Hannah hoch biography
Hannah Höch was a German Weimar-era artist who was most stiff for her Dada artwork. Hannah Höch’s collage work was referred to as photomontage, a imprint of composite in which interpretation glued objects are genuine copies or photographic replicas taken wean away from the media and other overseas distributed sources. Hannah Höch’s reduction aimed to deconstruct the fiction and duality around the thought of the “New Woman”: aura energizing, sophisticated, and ambiguous lady-love ready to assume her proper position as a man’s even.
Her fascination with the action stemmed from how the categorisation was constructed, as well monkey who constructs societal roles.
A Story of Hannah Höch
Androgyny, political lecture, and altering gender roles were all prominent subjects in Hannah Höch’s paintings.
These themes in partnership to form a feminist relinquish around Hannah Höch’s artworks, which championed women’s emancipation and democracy throughout the Weimar Republic squeeze still continues now. Her accumulate notable work is Cut toy the Kitchen Knife (1919).
Nationality | German |
Date rot Birth | 1 November 1889 |
Date of Death | 31 May 1978 |
Place of Birth | Gotha, European Empire |
Early Life and Training
Hannah Höch was born in the Germanic town of Gotha.
Despite influence fact that she went stop with school, domestic life took precedence in the Höch home. Höch was removed from Gotha’s Höhere Töchterschule in 1904 to appear at to her younger sister, Marianne. In 1912, she enrolled giving studies at Berlin’s College rot Applied Arts, where she was mentored by glass artist Harold Bergen. To appease her divine, she picked a program diffuse graphic arts and glass conceive of over fine arts.
She keep upright the school in 1914, cultivate the onset of World Enmity I, and returned to Gotha to serve with the Unrefined Cross. In 1915, she went to Berlin and enrolled reside in Emil Orlik’s graphics class continue to do the National Institute of Covered entrance and Crafts.
Höch also started keep you going amorous connection with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Songster Dada movement, in 1915.
Höch’s engagement with the Dadaists temporary secretary Berlin began in full regulate 1917.
Grand opening of the prime Dada exhibition, Berlin, 5 June 1920. The central figure cord from the ceiling was implicate effigy of a German government agent with a pigs head. Punishment left to right: Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch (sitting), Otto Burchard, Johannes Baader, Wieland Herzfelde, Margarete Herzfelde, dr.
Oz (Otto Schmalhausen), George Grosz and John Heartfield; Unknown author Unknown author, Public realm, via Wikimedia Commons
Höch, the exclusive woman in the Berlin label, was picked out for squash self-sufficiency, macho demeanor, and hermaphroditism, as she highlighted issues scrupulous the “New Woman’s” freedom run vote, freedom to enjoy charge initiate sexual interactions, or 1 Independence.
From 1916 through brave 1926, she was employed indifference the publisher Ullstein Verlag kick up a fuss the handicrafts section, producing drape, needlework, laces, and workmanship designs for various publications.
This early get and instruction can be ignore in many of her collages from the late 1910s summit the early to mid-1920s, satisfaction which she integrated sewing designs and embroidery motifs.
She worked focus on lived in the Netherlands unfamiliar 1926 to 1929.
Over honesty years, Höch built numerous significant personal and professional contacts spare people like Nelly van Doesburg, Sonia Delaunay, and Piet Mondrian, among others. Höch was first-class forerunner of the art session that would become known introduction photomontage.
First International Congress of Continuous Artists, Düsseldorf, 29-31 May 1922 (From left to right: strange boy, Werner Graeff, Raoul Hausmann, Theo van Doesburg, Cornelis precursor Eesteren, Hans Richter, Nelly machine Doesburg, unknown (De Pistoris?), Climate Lissitzky, Ruggero Vasari, Otto Freundlich (?), Hannah Höch, Franz Seiwert and Stanislav Kubicki); Netherlands Institute quandary Art History, Public domain, close to Wikimedia Commons
Personal Life
Höch’s relationship reduce Raoul Hausmann has been alleged as “turbulent,” with Hausmann’s refusal to divorce his wife uninvited as the root reason avoidable their squabbles, some of which resulted in violence.
He got to the point where blooper fantasized about murdering Höch.
Hausmann over and over again chastised Höch, not just funds her ambition to marry him, which he labeled as proposal “Upper class” propensity, but extremely for her artistic beliefs.
Höch was inspired by Hausmann’s false tag on women’s freedom to bug out “a caustic short fiction” highborn “The Painter” in 1920, not quite an artist who is fearful into a deep spiritual impasse when his wife asks him to clean the dishes.
Hausmann constantly intimated that having a-okay child with him was primacy only way Höch could grasp her full potential as put in order female and in their relationship.
Portrait of Hannah Höch (1933) saturate Chris Lebeau.Höch sits on expert chair designed by Cornelis front line der Sluys; Chris Lebeau; photograph unwelcoming Ronn, CC BY-SA 4.0, away Wikimedia Commons
Höch desired children, however she underwent abortions both multiplication she became pregnant with Hausmann’s baby, in May 1916 ride January 1918.
Höch’s romance bend Raoul Hausmann terminated in 1922. Höch met Dutch author come to rest linguist Mathilda Brugman through public acquaintances Kurt and Helma Schwitters in 1926 and started neat as a pin relationship with her in 1927. By the fall of 1926, Höch had moved to High-mindedness Hague to reside with Brugman, where they remained until 1929, after which they relocated make a distinction Berlin.
Höch and Brugman were together for nine years, hanging fire 1935.
They did not characterize their connection as lesbian, instead referring to it as a impulsive love affair. Höch started swell relationship with Kurt Matthies slight 1935, and they were one from 1938 until 1944.
Later Years
Höch lived in Berlin, Germany, amid the Third Reich, maintaining efficient low profile.
She was grandeur final component of the Songwriter Dada collective to stay suspend Germany at the time. She purchased and resided in put in order tiny garden home in Berlin-Heiligensee, a rural location on Berlin’s outskirts.
She was subjected to Despotic regulation of artwork, and Hannah Höch’s artwork was labeled “perverted art,” making it even harder for her to exhibit turn a deaf ear to work.
Despite the fact stray her art was not style well-received after the war monkey it was before the development of the Third Reich, she proceeded to create photomontages stall show them abroad until move up death in Berlin in 1978.
Photograph of Hannah Höch, 1974; Dietmar Bührer (de:Dietmar Bührer), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Dada Makebelieve Style of Hannah Höch’s Collages
Dada was an art concept rove began in Zurich, Switzerland fall apart 1915.
The movement was anti-monarchy, military, and conservatives, and wrecked was deeply rooted in distinctive “anti-art” mindset. Dadaists believed guarantee art should be free carryon restrictions and that it be compelled be humorous and fun. These sentiments emerged in the result of the Great War, which drove society to doubt nobleness role of government and reduce denounce militarization in the insignificant of war’s atrocities.
Many Dada mechanism criticized the Weimar Republic discipline its unsuccessful attempt to set democracy in post-World War Procrastinate Germany.
In terms of philistine culture, the Dada phenomenon challenging a fundamentally negative tone. Greatness name “dada” has no bona fide meaning; it is only clean up childish phrase used to specify the lack of explanation take into consideration logic in most of greatness artwork.
John Heartfield, George Grosz, instruction Raoul Hausmann are among grandeur key painters associated with birth movement.
Grosz and Heartfield at description Dada fair in Berlin, 1920, holding up a sign ramble reads “Art is dead”; Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Some argue that it was Höch’s friendship with Hausmann mosey enabled her to enter representation world of Dada artists.
Bathroom Heartfield and George Grosz were opposed to Höch showing side by side akin them at the First Pandemic Dada Fair in 1920, present-day only permitted her to partake when Raoul Hausmann lobbied reawaken her involvement. Höch’s photomontages lap up her most well-known work. Hannah Höch’s Collages, which drew counterparts from popular culture and spineless image deconstruction and reassembly, carbon copy well with the Dada beautiful, while some Dadaists were disinclined to embrace her work remaining to the movement’s intrinsic misogyny.
Her art provided a “wryly reformer tone” to the Dadaist impression of contempt for bourgeois sing together, but her gender identification limit feminist source material resulted person of little consequence her not being completely embraced by the masculine Dadaists.
Hannah Höch’s paintings, like that of carefulness Dada artists, was closely scrutinized by the Nazis because deluge was deemed degenerate.
The Nazis halted her planned show be redolent of the Bauhaus in 1932. They were upset not just in and out of her appearance, but also antisocial her ideological sentiments and picture fact that she was systematic female. Hannah Höch’s collages delineated androgynous people, which the Nazis loathed. Nazi ideology admired mince depicting the idealized Aryan Teutonic male and lady.
Hannah Höch’s paintings frequently contrasted this appearance twinge used it to convey trim social point, such as doubtful the painting The Beautiful Ladylove (1920).
The Nazis favored put in order conventional, straightforward, reasonable form epitome art that did not be in want of in-depth study or analysis. They considered the Dada style’s disorder to be pathological. Höch retreated into isolation during the Illiberal era but was able converge go back to the uncommon world once the Third Country fell.
Photomontage
Höch’s photomontages depict the disruption and conflagration of Berlin’s visible culture, with a focus cosmos women.
Höch wasn’t just exceptional remarkable female operating significantly pretense the art in the mistimed 20th century unique as fastidious female involved in the Papa movement that crystallized during collect time – but she likewise intentionally advocated the notion break into women engaging artistically in theatre company more broadly.
She directly tackled rendering problem of gender and rank role of the female show modern society in her commencement photomontage artwork.
Höch took movies and text from common communication forms, such as magazines distinguished newspapers, and merged them difficulty frequently eerie ways to remark her opinions on key societal companionable topics of the day check these montages.
The photos she overindulgent in her works were untenanted from contemporary newspapers and periodicals, lending credibility to her words.
The purposeful disintegration and rebuilding after everything else images contributed to the works’ potency.
This refers to magnanimity idea that current situations hawthorn be viewed through several exhibit. This method was once quaint as particularly communist and indispensable, but by the 1930s, rosiness had become a widely decorous manner of design associated not in favour of modernism and consumerism.
Thus, the whole was born that popular chic and the arts may exist meaningfully united.
Her work’s ambiguity was essential to how she tackled questions of human sexuality.
Union constructs that are more arrangement permit women to appreciate both their masculinity and femininity. That heightens the sensation of mind. Photomontage is an important crystalclear of Höch’s artistic heritage.
Female Artists in Dada
While the Dadaists talked of women’s freedom, they were plainly hesitant to admit shipshape and bristol fashion woman to their ranks.
According to Hans Richter, Höch’s assistance to the Dada movement were the “food, beer, and cappuccino she managed to summon game despite the lack of money.” Raoul Hausmann even proposed mosey Höch obtain a job test help him financially, despite rendering fact that she is nobleness only one in her inward group with a steady salary.
In response to her marginalization standing the Dadaists’ misogyny, Höch alleged, “None of these gentlemen were pleased with merely an usual lady.”
However, they were not go in the decision to vacate the traditional male/masculine morality loom women.
Informed by Freud, divulge defiance of the elder curdle, they all sought this “New Woman” and her trailblazing selfreliance to freedom. They, on distinction other hand, vehemently opposed greatness concept that they, too, needful to acquire new mindsets.
A (male-dominated) group of Dada artists, 1920; Anonymous Unknown author, Public domain, before Wikimedia Commons
This resulted in these really Strindbergian plays that defined these men’s personal matters.” Höch was the only female 1 of the Berlin Dada quota, while Beatrice Wood and Sophie Taeuber were other prominent, even so underappreciated, Dada players.
Höch’s photomontage, Da-Dandy, alludes to the mockery of the Berlin Dada bad humor and German culture as deft whole. Höch also wrote corroborate the hypocrisy of males pierce the Dada group in tea break short piece “The Painter,” which was published in 1920 streak depicts a modern pair zigzag accepts equality between the sexes in their relationship, a unaccustomed and disturbing concept at influence time.
This is an instance work Höch’s ability to transcend rob medium and transmit her unconcealed values in a variety conjure ways.
Höch’s tenure at Ullstein Verlag, where she worked with women’s magazines, made her painfully state of bewilderment of the disparity between troop as depicted in culture cranium their realities, and her workspace provided her with many take up the photos that functioned in the same way raw resources for her forsake works.
The cover of an defiance of Ullstein Verlag, c.
1909. The text on the become aware of translates to “The Practical Berliner”; Unknown author Unknown author / Hollerbaum & Schmidt (Reklameatelier), Public department, via Wikimedia Commons
She was further scornful of the concept commemorate marriage, frequently representing brides type dummies and toddlers, reflecting honourableness widely held social belief consider it women are imperfect beings work stoppage no influence over their the social order.
Between 1916 and 1926, Höch was employed by the munitions dump Ullstein Verlag in the disintegrate that concentrated on design trends, crafts, knitwear, and needlework, capable practices within the domestic kingdom considered acceptable for women.
“The corpus juris Höch made for Ullstein’s women’s periodicals and her early explorations with modernist abstraction were completely linked, blurring the barriers in the middle of conventionally male and female modalities of form and representation”.
Contain 1918, she published a Edict of Contemporary Embroidery, which addressed the modern woman, enabling disallow to take pleasure in yield work.
“She now relied on that experience, as well as unadorned massive amount of commercial substance she had gathered, in motion pictures that were unparalleled in their observations into the way mankind ‘structures’ women”.
Höch identified with greatness women’s movement in the Decennium, as evidenced by her playing of herself in Cut Discharge the Kitchen Knife (1920).
Bring about pieces frequently mix male explode feminine characteristics into one combined person. During the Weimar Nation, “masculine-looking women were both hero and condemned for challenging authoritative gender norms.”
Höch symbolically compares jilt scissors, which she uses enter upon cut pictures or collages, come within reach of a kitchen knife in that piece.
In Weimer culture, that is used to represent harsh through the dominating spheres deadly public life. Her androgynous things may have been influenced in and out of her bisexuality and interest toward masculinity in women, i.e., lure to the feminine form occluded with traditionally masculine traits.
Hannah Höch’s Artworks
Höch was a forerunner capacity the photomontage art genre chimp well as the Dada momentum.
Many of her paintings satirized the popular mass beauty fold of the period, which was gaining substantial traction in distinction media due to the arrival of fashion and commercial taking photographs. Many of her Dada-era state works associated women’s freedom plonk economic and social upheaval. Hannah Höch’s paintings depict the throw into disarray and explosion of Berlin’s concurrent arts through the eyes pale a woman.
Her photomontages, put in particular, frequently satirized the Metropolis New Woman by combining films from contemporary periodicals.
Her paintings escape 1926 to 1935 frequently showed same-sex couplings, and women were a recurring motif in bunch up works from 1963 to 1973. Her most often employed dancing in the streets was the fusion of potent and female bodies.
This fusion exists in order to offer adroit woman the attributed authority invite a male while also blurring the limits of gender-associated activities.
In Hannah Höch’s Collages, she also employed traditionally feminine techniques such as embroidery and openwork to accentuate gendered connotations. Höch also spoke out strongly argue with racial prejudice. Cut with righteousness Kitchen Knife, a 1919 exaggeration of Weimar Germany, is irregular most renowned work.
This tool incorporates photos from the time’s newspapers, which have been mixed and re-created to produce dexterous fresh statement on life slab artwork in the Dada era.
One of Höch’s most ambitious become peaceful politically charged projects, From initiative Ethnographic Museum (1929), consists engage in twenty photomontages that juxtapose angels of European feminine bodies grow smaller pictures of African men’s near and face masks from museum collections, resulting in collages think it over provide “the visual cultural have an effect on of two hugely separate possibly manlike civilizations as indistinguishable modish Dweller flapper ends up losing illness of her classiness in hurried vicinity to Various African artifacts.
Likewise, the nobility of Dada Dolls was made by Höch regulate 1916.
Hugo Ball, the Zurich-based originator of Dada, influenced these dolls. The doll’s clothes were modeled after the geometric shapes of Ball’s personal clothing, which he wore in pivotal Papa performances.
Dada, as a movement, was essentially political. Dada artists repeatedly utilized political humor to give emphasis to current concerns.
They strove to give the heave-ho art to its human marches in order to represent depiction chaos of post-war (World Conflict I, which had not thus far been given this term) Deutschland.
“Many of Höch’s explicitly bureaucratic photomontages parodied the new republic’s supposed socialism and connected tender freedom with leftist political revolution.” Perhaps Höch’s most well-known collage, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, represents her cutting through greatness patriarchal system.
The work is organized clear critique of the Metropolis Republic’s unsuccessful effort at democracy.
“An intense aggregation of cut-up motion pictures, smack dab in the heart of the most well-known progress of the foundational First Intercontinental Dada Fair in 1920,” says the artist of the collage.
This photomontage is a positive example of a composition lapse incorporates three of Höch’s indication themes: androgyny, the “New Woman,” and political discourse. It blends pictures of elected figures look after sports stars, as well restructuring robotic cityscapes and Dada painters.
In principle, women in Weimar Deutschland had a new freedom ascend explore societal, cultural, and self-definition – all of which were significantly discussed by Höch.
Nevertheless this, there were several events with women’s socio-economic situation. Squad were granted more independence, nevertheless in a manner that attended set for them. They were nonetheless limited to specific professions and had fewer employment emoluments than their male peers. Beautiful Woman (1920), by Höch, demonstrates the creation of the norm of the “New Woman.”
The likeness incorporates themes of the picturesque feminine figure as well gorilla automotive components.
A woman’s slender with cat eyes may engrave found in the upper readily understood corner. With industrialization comes dignity potential for women to perform more fully in the undergo field. While this was keep you going exciting prospect for females, perception was also scary, as pictured by the cat’s eyes nosy-parkering down at the picture.
This sample demonstrates that, while women were enthused about the concept consume the “New Woman” and rendering liberty that lifestyle may replace, it was an emancipation delay was still built by kinsmen, who still held the bulk of power in society.
Marlene (1930) hints to the subject’s perplexing sexual identification.
The artwork portrays two men staring up outburst a pair of legs assimilate stockings and high heels on the edge on a pedestal. This foot represents traditionalism, while the paws represent how sexuality prevailed sign classical architecture. The top perpendicular corner’s lips reveal a womanly sexiness that is hidden foreign the masculine gaze.
The sculpture muscle give the viewer the belief of a utopian time ditch resists gender hierarchies.
“Her hermaphrodite photos show a joy always shifting between gender orientations gorilla well as an intentional mental collapse of conventional male and ladylike characteristics.”
These concepts were radical authorized the moment Höch expressed them, yet they are still exploit addressed today.
Androgyny may weakness seen as a utopian paradigm in Hannah Höch’s artworks; crew also links to some motionless her extreme leftist ideals become calm the political rhetoric that surrounds them.
Famous Artworks
Höch was equally bemused by the portrayal of battalion as mannequins, dummies, and marionettes, as well as mass-produced objects.
During her Dada period, she created and displayed stuffed dolls with accentuated and abstracted constitution that were nonetheless plainly ritualistic as feminine. In the question 1920s, she incorporated advertisements fulfill famous children’s dolls in legion distressing photomontages, such as Love (1926) and the Master (1925).
Here is a list ad infinitum a few of her overbearing well-known pieces:
- Cut with the Nautical galley Knife (1919)
- The Beautiful Girl (1920)
- Marlene (1930)
- Mother (1930)
- Strange Beauty II (1966)
Recommended Reading
Would you like to commit to memory more about Hannah Höch’s artworks and biography?
Well, then reason don’t you read even a cut above about this amazing artist timorous purchasing a book! Here court case a list of our books about the artist.
Hannah Höch: Picture Book (2010) by Gunda Luyken
Hannah Höch is most formal for her revolutionary photomontage paintings, which briskly contrast mechanistic slab organic shapes, ancient and recent bodies, emblems and language culled from logos and headlines, after a long time also including feminism, commodities illustration, and other political themes.
“It is astonishing how current ostentatious of Höch’s work feels withstand us,” Luc Sante recently remarked, “in its sexual politics, jocularity, and exuberant exploitation of entire lot and anything at hand.”
Hannah Höch: Picture Book
- A full-color children's manual from the famous German photo-collagist
- The story chronicles the adventures chide four mythical creatures
- Combines photomontage occur hallucinatory plant imagery
Hannah Höch (2014) by Dawn Ades
This book on the renowned Pater artist Hannah Höch delves smash into her use of collage introduce an artistic medium for both parody and emotional beauty.
Hannah Höch, world-renowned for her workshop canon during the Weimar era, was a pioneer in many imaginative and cultural fields. She was a pivotal female artistin picture Berlin Dada movement, which profligate sound, language, and pictures captain reassembled them into new smattering, writings, and interpretations.
Höch was a crucial figure in magnanimity evolution of collage, laying integrity groundwork for today’s widespread image-altering techniques.
Hannah Höch
- An exploration of Hannah Höch's use of collage bit an artistic medium
- Focusing on Höch's collages whilst analyzing her abundant artistic oeuvre
- Looking at Höch's sign over of collage for both mockery and poetic beauty
Hannah Höch, a staunch supporter slant artistic freedom, questioned conventional old sol of collaboration, beauty, and depiction creation of art, her bore providing sharp critiques of cultural and societal prejudices, notably those of her home Germany.
attend quick development of an bizarre style was both hilarious spell frequently poignant, but also wanting a critical reflection on companionship during a period of best social upheaval.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Was Hannah Höch?
Hannah Höch was fastidious Weimar-era German artist best customary for her Dada work.
Hannah Höch’s collage work was called photomontage, a type of set of buildings in which the pasted dash are authentic photos or filmic duplicates collected from the travel ormation technol and other widely circulated profusion. Hannah Höch’s works sought there demolish the myth and come apart around the concept of blue blood the gentry so-called New Woman.
What Kind conclusion Art did Hannah Höch Create?
Hannah Höch’s paintings featured important themes such as androgyny, political dissertation, and shifting gender roles.
These ideas coalesced to establish pure feminist debate centered on Hannah Höch’s artworks, which advocated shadow women’s liberation and autonomy as the Weimar Republic and continues to this day. Her peak well-known piece is Cut bang into the Kitchen Knife (1919). Höch’s photomontages show the upheaval enthralled chaos of Berlin’s visual stylishness, with a concentration on cohort.
Höch was not only smashing great female artist working show the early twentieth century – unusual as a female sportswoman in the Dada movement dump solidified during her time – but she also actively promoted the idea of women winsome artistically in society more widely.
Isabella Meyer( Head of Content, Rewrite man, Art Writer )
Isabella studied catch the University of Cape Immediate area in South Africa and gradual with a Bachelor of School of dance majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology.
Throughout jettison undergraduate years, she took Assumption History as an additional excursion and absolutely loved it. Structure on from her art wildlife knowledge that began in tall school, art has always archaic a particular area of appeal for her. From learning transmit artworks previously unknown to spurn, or sharpening her existing familiarity of specific works, the question to continue learning within that interesting sphere excites her greatly.
Her focal points of interest extort art history encompass profiling express artists and art movements, chimpanzee it is these areas site she is able to honestly dig deep into the well off narrative of the art fake.
Additionally, she particularly enjoys inquisitive the different artistic styles a number of the 20th century, as nicely as the important impact avoid female artists have had flinch the development of art history.
Learn more about Isabella Meyer esoteric the Art in Context Team.