hannah hoch - photomontage

Hannah Hoch was born the daughter of a painter and insurance company manager in Gotha, Germany in 1889. Hoch attended the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin studying glass design and graphic arts. She also studied calligraphy, embroidery, fabric, and wallpaper design. She took a short break to work under the Red Cross in the beginning of World War I, but later continued her studies of graphics in 1915 at the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts working with women’s handicrafts and fabric designs under Ullstein Verlang from 1916-1926.

In post-war Berlin Hannah Höch met and established a relationship with Raoul Hausmann, one of the driving forces behind Dada. Together they set about learning the techniques of photomontage. Whereas for many of the other Dadaists, this art form was an interesting experiment, later discarded, for Höch it was the beginning of life-long love affair. Hoch became friends with Raoul Hausmann in 1915 and was influenced to join the Berlin Dada movement. She is recognized as the only German woman participant in Dadaism, and although this was a great feminist achievement Hans Richter described her as, “the girl who procured sandwiches, beer and coffee, on a limited budget”. Hoch used these negative views to strengthen her work in the future and she first exhibited her work in the Novembergruppe in 1920.

 Hoch experimented with non-objective art through painting, collage, photography and graphics. She pieced these together and worked with a style that would later become known as photomontage. More often than not her work was centered on women as they are depicted in media in comparison with actuality. She formed women from mannequins, brides, children, and dolls; everything deemed unimportant or small in society. To combat the stereotyped idea of objectified women she created many pieces combining males and females. Among her major works, Cut with the Kitchen-knife set Hoch apart from her male colleagues, portraying a balance in composition and expressing her opinions of the power of women. Her most exciting work of the 1920’s included From the Ethnographic Museum, 17 montages of females and their identities.

 Peter Boswell wrote in a catalog entitiel The Photomontages of Hanna Hoch that her work evolved “from mordant social commentary to surrealist fantasy to outright abstraction. Her genius lies in the sensitivity with which she took in the world around her. The image of Hoch in her old age, peering owl-like through her magnifying glass, is indelible,” He continued. ”Hunched over her worktable, looking through her glass at the printed ephemera of her world, she slices it delicately apart and pieces it carefully back together so that we may see it more clearly.” Photomontage became an accepted and celebrated medium during the late 1920’s and Hoch became recognized as a great pioneer of the artform.