Florence Henri

Born in New York to French father and German mother, Henri returned to Europe as a toddler to grow up in Paris studying music. After WWI she discovered figurative arts and started studying painting in Munich and Berlin. There she met E instein, who introduced her to some of the most prominent avant-garde artists. Back in Paris she started to exhibit abstract artworks. In 1927 she enrolled for summer courses at the Bauhaus Dessau: here she befriended with Albers, Kandinsky, Gropius and Breuer. She discovered photography and developed her own style, combining Constructivism and Surrealism, the use of mirrors and geometric forms. Moholy-Nagy wrote an article on The 10 about her photography and in 1929 she decided to abandon painting to focus exclusively on photography. She collaborated with magazines such as Cercle et Carré and L’Art Contemporair. Towards the end of ‘30s and until the ‘50s she took up painting again, balancing it with photography. During the ‘60s she moved to a small village in France and continued painting and editing old pictures.

Wassily Kandinsky / László Moholy-Nagy / Walter Gropius / Josef Albers