Florence Henri

Art Brokerage: Florence Henri American Artist: b. 1893-1982. Florence Henri (28 June 1893, New York – 24 July 1982, Laboissière-en-Thelle) was a photographer and artist. She grew up in Europe and studied in Rome, where she met the Futurists, and in Berlin, then in Paris with Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, and finally at the Dessau Bauhaus before returning to Paris where she started with photography. Her work includes experimental photography, advertising, and portraits, many of artists. Henri was born in New York to a French father and a Polish mother. In 1925, Florence Henri enrolled in the Académie Moderne to study under Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. In the summer of 1925, Polish painter Victor Yanaga Poznanski organized "Exposition International. L'Art d'Aujourd'hui." It was the first international exhibition of avant-garde art in Paris since World War I. Besides Henri, other artists at the exhibit included Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso. After exhibiting works in the "Exposition de l'Académie Moderne" at the Galerie Aubier in March of 1927, Henri enrolled at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Florence Henri's work occupied a central place in the world of avant-garde photography in the late 1920s. She became a member of the Cercle et Carré group in 1929. At the Bauhaus, Henri met László Moholy-Nagy and enrolled in his summer photography course. She moved into Moholy-Nagy's house and became a close friend of his wife Lucia Moholy who encouraged her to take up photography. One of her self portraits was published by Moholy-Nagy in i10 Internationale Revue. Moholy-Nagy's critique recognises that her photographs fulfill the tenet of 'making strange' where 'reflections and spatial relationships, overlapping and penetrations are examined from a new perspectival angle'. Many of her photographs incorporate mirrors; Henri used mirrors for her own self-dramatisations, in commercial work and to make portraits of friends such as Jean Arp, Petra Van Doesburg, Sonia Delaunay, Wassili Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, and Margarete Schall. Listings wanted.