Hannah Höch was a . She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media.
1. Her full name was Anna Therese Johanne Höch.
2. She was born on November 1, 1889.
3. She was born in Gotha, Germany.
4. Although she attended school, Höch was taken out of the Höhere Töchterschule in Gotha to care for her youngest sibling, Marianne in 1904.
5. In 1912 she began classes at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin under the guidance of glass designer Harold Bergen.
6. Instead of fine arts, she chose the curriculum in glass design and graphic arts, rather than fine arts, to please her father.
7. In 1914, at the start of World War I, she left the school and returned home to Gotha to work with the Red Cross.
8. In 1915 she returned to school, entering the graphics class of Emil Orlik at the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts.
9. She was best known for her works that depicted androgyny, political discourse, and shifting gender roles.
10. Höch’s work was intended to dismantle the fable and dichotomy that existed in the concept of the “New Woman”: an energetic, professional, and androgynous woman, who is ready to take her place as man’s equal. Her interest in the topic was in how the dichotomy was structured, as well as in who structures social roles.
11. In 1915, Höch began an intimate relationship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement.
12. They were together for 7 years.
13. After breaking up with him, she got into a relationship with a woman, Dutch writer and linguist Mathilda (‘Til’) Brugman.
14. By autumn of 1926, Höch moved to Hague to live with Brugman, where they lived until 1929, at which time they moved to Berlin.
15. Höch and Brugman’s relationship lasted nine years, until 1935.
16. Their relationship was never tagged lesbian, instead, a private love relationship.
17. Höch spent the years of the Third Reich in Berlin, Germany, keeping a low profile because the Nazis claimed her art was degenerate.
18. She lived in Berlin-Heiligensee, a remote area on the outskirts of Berlin, hiding in a small garden house.
19. She married businessman and pianist Kurt Matthies in 1938 and divorced him in 1944.
20. “Höch’s photomontages display the chaos and combustion of Berlin’s visual culture from a particularly female perspective”
21. The power of the works came from the intentional dismemberment and reconstruction of the images. This alludes to the notion that current issues can be viewed through different lenses. This technique was originally thought of as extremely leftist and revolutionary, but by the 1930s, it had become an accepted mode of design linked with modernity and consumerism.
22. Being inspired by her relationship with Raoul Hausmann, she wrote a short caustic story called “The painter” about an artist who had an existential crisis and mental breakdown after his wife asked him if he could wash the dishes.
23. Her most important pieces were The “Beautiful Girl” and “Marlene”.
24. The Dada movement had a tone of fundamental negativity in regards to bourgeois society. The term “dada” has no actual meaning – it is a childlike word used to describe the lack of reason or logic in much of the artwork.
25. She passed away on May 31, 1978, at 88 years of age.
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