Gender and art

Florence Henri (New York, 1893-Compiègne, 1982), artiste protéiforme, est d’abord connue pour sa peinture, avant de se faire une place incontestable dans le domaine de la photographie des avant-gardes entre la fin des années 1920 et le début des années 1940. Après avoir vécu en Silésie, à Munich, Vienne, Rome et surtout Berlin, elle se fixe définitivement à Paris au milieu des années 1920, où elle se consacre pleinement à la photographie. Ce médium lui permet d’expérimenter de nouvelles relations à l’espace, notamment par l’introduction de miroirs et autres objets dans ses compositions.

Le Jeu de Paume présente un vaste panorama de la production photographique de Florence Henri, développée entre 1927 et 1940, qui comprend aussi bien ses autoportraits, compositions abstraites,
portraits d’artistes, nus, photomontages, photocollages, que des photographies documentaires prises à Rome, à Paris et en Bretagne.

Florence Henri - Miroir des avant-gardes, 1927-1940

du 24 février au 17 mai 2015

Jeu de Paume, Paris

Originally, Gertrud Arndt (1903-2000) had wanted to become an  architect, but a regular course in architecture was not yet being  offered at the Bauhaus. The master of form in the weaving workshop,  Georg Muche, recognized her special talent in the field of textiles and  entrusted her with creating a carpet to her own design as an  introduction to it. Gertrud Arndt quickly became a specialist; her  best-known work was a carpet produced for Walter Gropius’s office. On  completing her apprenticeship examination, she entirely turned to  photography. Starting in 1929, she took photographic self-portraits in a  series she called ‘Mask Portraits’dramatizing herself with only a few  accessories; the photographs are internationally well-known today.

Female Bauhaus: Gertrud Arndt. Weaver and photographer, 1923-1931

Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin

30 January 2012 – 22 April 2013

Florence Henri, Self-portrait, 1928.

"The photographs and photo-montages of Florence Henri (1893–1982) attest to her broad artistic education and an unusual openness for new currents in the art of the time.

The artist, who had studied the piano under Ferruccio Busoni in Rome and painting in Paris under Fernand Léger, in Berlin under Johann Walter-Kurau and in Munich under Hans Hofmann, spent a brief semester as a guest at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927.

Although photography was not part of the curriculum at the Bauhaus at this time, lecturers such as László Moholy-Nagy and Georg Muche, as well as pupils including Walter Funkat and Edmund Collein experimented intensively with this medium. It was here that Florence Henri gained the inspiration to become a photographer herself."

Florence Henri - Compositionen

21.03.2014 - 14.09.2014

Pinakothek der Moderne, München

http://www.pinakothek.de/kalender/2014-03-21/44399/florence-henri-compositionen