The Visual Art Collection

The National Collection has loaned a collage to the retrospective exhibition Hannah Höch: Millions of Views. The collage, depicting the universe with an eye, belongs to a somewhat atypical subdivision within the collection: the Visual Art Collection. It consists primarily of drawings from the estate of architect and urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren and includes works by Karel Appel, César Domela, Vilmos Huszár, Fernand Léger, Lázló Moholy Nagy and Karl Moser. It also contains several objects by the Dutch visual artist and architect Bruno Mertens.

Photocollage

Höch developed the technique of photocollage together with Raoul Hausmann, whom she met in 1915. Through him, she became acquainted with Kurt Schwitters, John Heartfield and other members of the Berlin Dada group, a circle of mainly male artists who were critics of German culture in the period following the First World War. In 1919, Höch made her most important work of that period, entitled Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands (Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife Through Weimar Germany’s Last Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch). The work depicts the chaos of this era, with cut-out portraits of the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II; Germany’s first president, Friedrich Ebert; army general and future president, Paul von Hindenburg; and banker, economist and politician, Hjalmar Schacht. Portraits of some of the Dadaist artists appear between cogs, ball bearings, wheels, animals, athletes and dancers. The collage also has a feminist theme. It features images of Greta Garbo, Käthe Kollwitz and other emancipated women, and it contains a map of Europe showing in black those countries where women were still not allowed to vote.

Höch’s work garnered critical acclaim despite the patronising views of her male peers. In a 1959 interview, she said: “Most of our male colleagues continued for a long while to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status.” Hannah Höch in Edouard Roditi, ‘Interview with Hannah Höch’, Arts Magazine, vol. 34, no. 3 (Dec. 1959): p.29. Via: https://www.moma.org/artists/2675

Contacts with Dutch artists

Hannah Höch spent several years in the Netherlands, an important period in her personal and professional life. The traces of these relationships can be found in various archives in the collection. In 1926, at Schwitters’ invitation, she stayed in Kijkduin, where she met old and new friends including Vilmos Huszár, Cornelis van Eesteren, Johannes Oud and Theo and Nelly van Doesburg. She fell in love with the writer and linguist Mathilda (Til) Brugman and lived with her in The Hague. During her stay in the Netherlands, she also befriended the architect, Jan Buijs. The National Collection contains a collection of letters that Buijs wrote to Höch and Tilman, later supplemented with copies of 23 letters and postcards to Höch from Jan Buijs, Theo van Doesburg and the architect Han van Loghem.