Life and career
Origins and training
Höch developed her work in Berlin’s print and media culture. Artist and writer Raoul Hausmann connected her with Dada; the predominantly male group often undervalued women’s professional work.
Places, turning points and artistic change
She cut up photographs and printed matter to question social roles, political authority and ideas of beauty. The breakup of Berlin Dada did not end her experiments. Under the Nazis she remained in Germany but was excluded from exhibitions.
Beyond the studio
Her photomontages helped establish a lasting language of feminist and media criticism. After the war she exhibited again, with major recognition arriving late in her life.
Works across a career
Selected examples, not a complete catalogue. Read date ranges and attributions before inferring a career sequence.
Reading the selected works together
The study, collage and dancer use different fragments to question how a modern person is pictured.
- 01
1921
1921
Study for Man and Machine
- Material / technique
- Drawing
- Attribution / role
- See the museum attribution
- Collection / source
- MoMA — Hannah Höch
A useful early example of bodies meeting mechanical imagery.
- 02
c. 1925
c. 1925
Collage II (On Filet Ground) (Collage II [Auf Filetgrund])
- Material / technique
- Cut-and-pasted printed and painted paper on printed paper
- Attribution / role
- Collection / source
- The Museum of Modern Art
Artist-wide context
She cut up media photographs to question the roles people were expected to play, especially women.
- 03
1930
1930
Indian Dancer: From an Ethnographic Museum
- Material / technique
- Photomontage
- Attribution / role
- See the museum attribution
- Collection / source
- MoMA — Hannah Höch
Read the constructed figure critically, including the colonial museum imagery it reuses.
Materials, marks and colour
Media and surface
Scissors, paste and printed photographs are central tools.
Marks and structure
Deliberate mismatches expose how an image has been assembled.
Palette and light
Differences in scale, skin tone and printed texture can be more pointed than a harmonious palette.