Art Herstory – Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch, ‘Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany’, collage, mixed media, 1919-1920.

German artist Hannah Höch (1889 – 1978)

From 1912 to 1914 Hannah Höch studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under the guidance of Harold Bergen. In 1915, Hannah began an influential romantic frienship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. They got married and live together for 7 years, and then she divorced him in 1922. Hannah met the Dutch writer Til Burgman in 1926 when she was working in the Netherlands. They fell in love, and from 1929 until 1936 they lived and worked together first in Den Haag at the Dutch North Sea cost and later in Berlin, Germany.
Feminist artist Hannah Höch was the lone woman among the Berlin Dada group, although Sophie Täuber, Beatrice Wood, and Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven were also important Dada figures. Höch references the hypocrisy of the Berlin Dada group and German society can be seen in her early photomontages.