Hannah Höch: The dadaist who criticized twentieth-century society

April 09, 2019 at 12:50 a.m.


Hannah Höch: The dadaist who criticized twentieth-century society


In a world dominated by men, Hannah Höch fragmented 20th-century European society in her Dadaist collages.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of European artists pieced together images they had found in popular media to create collages with social criticism.

In them, the individual statements of their creators and the visual culture of an important historical moment were shown.

This handful of artists called his movement: Dadaism.

Quickly, his new and strange works of art offered important controversial ideas that corresponded to topics such as gender, politics and creativity.

Dadaism

 

Dadaism It is a cultural and artistic movement created in order to antagonize the arts.

To wonder what it could serve in a time of war and crisis. As well as what were its parameters. How it was and how it should be.

It emerged at 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. It was proposed by Hugo Ball, writer of the first Dadaist texts.

Later, the Romanian Tristan Tzara joined, who would become the emblem of Dadaism.

In Germany, most of Dada's artists who work in photomontage were men: George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters.

However, the German Hannah Höch would become a space in a world led by male artists.

And soon, she would become known for her incisive political collage and her harsh criticism of the stereotypes and archetypes of female beauty.

The forgotten dadaist

 

Hannah Höch was born in 1889 in Gotha, Germany. She is one of the most important collage artists of the 20th century.

At 1912, he moved to Berlin to attend the School of Applied Arts. He studied glassmaking and art book design.

However, he took a short break from his studies during the war to work at the Red Cross.

In 1915, when the war came to an end she met Hausmann, who introduced her into her circle of Dada artists and became her lover.

Despite Höch's significant ability, Hausmann did not take it seriously, and almost turned down his participation in the First Dada International Fair in Berlin at 1920.

Another degrading example was the nickname "good girl" of the painter Hans Richter.

Criticism and struggle

 

He worked in the fashion industry and explored the abstract art of his time. He questioned and mocked him, just like Dadaism.

He criticized society, translating it into a fragmented world in his collages or photomontages.

In addition, He questioned the idea and the concept of feminine beauty. From the clothes that are used to the physical aspect and the person.

As well as the archetypes imposed on women.

And the pressure on these; what beauty is and what is expected and demanded of them.

Even on how humanity in general conceives beauty and people live themselves as beautiful.

He emphasized a fragmented world, collapsed by war and economic crises.
The compositions of the whole body and the faces, were the main characteristics of his work, he turned them alien and fragmented beings.

One of its most recurrent themes was the presentation of the new woman, the one that can live independently. That he is free and fights for justice and equality.

To make matters worse, Hannah Höch continually denounced the outrages of a sexist and misogynist society.

In turn, he spoke openly about androgyny and lesbian love, which he knew first-hand, since it was considered bisexuality.

She was one of the few female members recognized by Dadaism.

Perhaps one of his greatest legacies, is that it offered a refreshing antithesis to the machista constructions of the movement.

His photomontages have kaleidoscopic visions of German culture during the interwar era, often from a perspective queer feminist.

In 1937 Nazi anger would suffer for its "extremism" and its considered degenerate art ; so he had to exhibit abroad.

Hanna Höch would die the 31 of May of 1978, in her beloved Berlin and it would be forever, the greatest Dadaist.