7180 - Höch, Hannah

Höch, Hannah "Still Life" Black reed pen, watercolor, and opaque white on sturdy Velin card. 1940. 46.5 x 41.3 cm. Monogrammed “H.H.” in black pen at the bottom right and dated in pencil; signed “Höch” in pencil on the reverse upper left and dated, titled, and dimensioned at the bottom right. Using a free formal language that oscillates between figuration and abstraction, Höch creates a vibrantly colored still life. At the center of the densely interwoven composition stand a vase of flowers and a stylized white dove, which merge with the surrounding space—composed of floral and plant forms—into a vibrant structure of color fields and linear abbreviations rendered in luminous white brushstrokes. Spatial order is dissolved, and with a sure sense of the interplay between line and plane, Höch transforms the traditional still life into a unique, poetic, and abstract visual world. With her move to her house in Heiligensee in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the artist withdrew into a form of “internal emigration” and seclusion away from the big city, where she led a largely unremarkable life. The flower-filled garden became the focal point and an inexhaustible source of inspiration; from then on, it served as the starting point for numerous, often cheerful-looking flower paintings and still lifes within the artist’s diverse, stylistically eclectic body of work. The work is documented by a photograph taken by Höch during her lifetime and held in the archives of the Berlinische Galerie. We thank Dr. Ralf Burmeister of the Berlinische Galerie for his kind information provided on October 6, 2026. Provenance: Formerly the collection of Dr. Maria Magdalena Klesse, Heiligensee (physician and neighbor of Hannah Höch) In the family’s possession ever since - Please request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is usually not listed in the catalog. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.