7181 - Höch, Hannah

Höch, Hannah "Rose" Collage. Color offset print, collaged, on cardboard. 1969. 35.5 x 28 cm. Traces of a date in the lower right; signed “H. Höch” in pencil on the reverse, dated and titled, and bearing the round stamp “Hannah Höch Estate / König-Höch Collection.” Armed with scissors and glue, Hannah Höch—one of the pioneers of modern collage—mechanically and visually breaks down a small section of her world into fragments, only to reassemble them and thereby create new visual experiences. With an ironic twist, she combines the flawless beauty of a dew-kissed rosebud with cobblestones and steel grating. This surreal element is a defining factor in the composition, which leaves the interpretation up to the viewer. The eye must first identify and decipher the elements that belong together. Thus, this wonderful work creates a play on visual perception and association. Hannah Höch, one of the most significant German avant-garde artists and a leading figure of the Dada movement, experimented with various materials and techniques in her art, but her best-known works are her collages. Trained by Emil Orlik at the School of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, she designed fabric and wallpaper patterns for the needlework editorial department of Ullstein Publishing and wrote articles for the publisher’s magazines, in which she later frequently found motifs for her collages and photomontages. Provenance: Private collection, Austria - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.