hannah hoch: life portrait

German photomonteur Hannah Höch (1889–1978) is best known for her association with the Berlin Dadaists. But her life and artistic career far outlasted Dada, spanning two world wars and most of the 20th century. And at the age of 83, Höch began to look back.The result was Höch’s last--and largest, at nearly 4 x 5 feet--photo collage, “Life Portrait,” created between 1972 and 1973. Though she did not originally set out to make an autobiographical work, the collage functions as a kind of self-portrait for the artist, looking back on her life and work while also ironically and poetically commenting on key political, social, and artistic events from the previous 50 years. Höch literally inserts herself into the work several times, with photographs of herself at various ages (always identifiable with her trademark bobbed hair), and returns to themes and images that she had addressed throughout her oeuvre, including fashion imagery, news photographs, African art and pictures of plants and ani