Hannah Höch, a Weimar dadaist

Hannah Höch (1889-1978). Student of Emil Orlík. Raoul Hausmann’s companion, she is the only woman to participate actively in the Dada actions in Berlin, around 1919-1920. She also adheres to the Novembergruppe. Later, she gets close to the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands.

Like her colleagues Hausmann and John Heartfield, Höch's early works are mostly political. Photomontage was the aesthetics of revolution, of protest. It was not just a game, and in the hands of these artists, it became intensely ideological, a defense of freedom in times of tyranny and a weapon against injustice. People's heads could be cut in half, their bodies deformed, their words and deformed actions. But Höch, unlike Heartfield, was never doctrinaire or narrowly focused on a political message, except maybe a whiff of anarchy.