Akademik

(1889-1978)

   graphic artist; a pioneer with collage and a member of the Berlin* Dada* movement. She was born in Gotha; her father managed an insurance company, while her mother was an amateur painter. After Hannah left school to care for a younger sister, she worked for her father before enrolling in 1912 in Berlin's Kunstgewerbeschule. When war forced the school's closure, she returned to Gotha and was briefly engaged in Red Cross work. But in 1915 she resumed studies in graphics at the Berlin Museum's Kunstgewer-beschule; she also began a seven-year liaison with Raoul Hausmann, an Austrian artist living in Berlin. During 1916-1926 she worked part-time for the Ullstein Verlag,* designing patterns and drawing models. When she joined Club-Dada, founded by Richard Huelsenbeck in April 1918, she and Hausmann began ex-ploring collage and photomontage with an eye to bridging high art and popular culture. In 1920 she participated with Hausmann in Berlin s First International Dada Fair. Although she was among the critics of the Novembergruppe,* she displayed her work in the group's annual exhibitions in 1920-1923, 1925-1926, and 1930-1931. Noted for their personal touch and inclusion of humor, her paintings and collages appeared in Huelsenbeck s Dada-Almanach. From about 1920 she assisted Kurt Schwitters* with his "Merzbau"; under his influence she began her Constructivist collages in 1922. In 1926, after sojourns in Italy and France, she joined Kurt and Helma Schwitters in the Netherlands and made her first contact with the de Stijl group; living with the writer Til Brugman, she remained at The Hague until 1929, the year Holland staged her first solo exhibition.

   Having returned to Berlin with Brugman, Höch exhibited in 1930 and 1931 in the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung (Greater Berlin Art Exhibition) and also participated in the 1931 Berlin Fotomontage Exhibition and in Frauen in Not (Women in need), a show protesting the government s antiabortion laws. When the Bauhaus* moved from Dessau to Berlin in 1932, it canceled a solo exhibition of Höch's work. During the Third Reich she retained her Berlin residence, but lived in "internal exile," ceasing to exhibit her work in Germany. She remained in West Berlin after World War II.

   REFERENCES:Barron, German Expressionism; Clair, 1920s; Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife; Willett, Art and Politics.