Hannah Höch was born at Gotha, on 1 November 1889. In 1912 she began her studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where she attended Harold Bengen's class in glass design. In 1915 she enrolled in painting classes at the State Museum for Arts and Crafts and in the same year she met Raoul Hausmann, with whom she formed a close relationship. Both were central figures of the Dada group in Berlin and developed the principle of photomontage. In 1919 she was represented in the First International Dada Fair in Berlin and in 1921 participated in an Anti-Dada-Merz Tour, which took her to Prague with Hausmann and Helma and Kurt Schwitters. After parting with Hausman she worked with Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, contributing to the latter's Merz-Bau in 1922. From 1926 to 1929 she lived with the Dutch author til Brugman in The Hague, where she had close connections with the De Stijl movement. She held her first solo exhibition at Galerie de Bron, The Hague, in 1929 and in the same year returned to Berlin where she took part in the Werkbund exhibition 'Film und foto' in Stuttgart. A solo exhibition of photomontages and watercolours, planned to take place at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1932, was cancelled when the Bauhaus was closed down. She survived the Nazi period living in seclusion in a northern suburb of Berlin. A retrospective of her work was held at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, in 1976. Höch died in Berlin on 31 May 1978.