BERN.- She was a musician in Paris and London, she painted in Paris, Munich, Rome and Spain, attended courses by Paul Klee, among others, at the Bauhaus, and became, with her photographs, one of the most important representatives of ‘New Vision’. Florence Henri (1893–1982) moved at the centres of the European avant-garde and helped shape them to a considerable degree, particularly in the field of photography. From 29 August 2026 to 10 January 2027, in the context of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee, the Zentrum Paul Klee is showing the artist’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland for over 40 years.

Artdaily Recommended · Paid Link

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

A focused volume on Florence Henri and the European avant-garde

Explore Florence Henri’s photographic vision through mirrors, composition, modernist experimentation, portraiture, and her place within the avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s.

See it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Florence Henri’s artistic beginnings coincide with a time of great political and social upheavals: before, during and after the world wars, artists all over Europe were seeking new forms of expression to represent appropriately or to deliberately deny social realities. The main figures of these movements lived in large cities such as London, Rome, Berlin, Munich and Paris. Florence Henri also moved between these cities, establishing a dense network with artists from the worlds of music, literature and painting.

Henri enjoyed early success as a pianist, but her self-critical attitude led her to abandon music, and in 1914 she began to train as a painter in Berlin and Düsseldorf. The art historian Carl Einstein brought her into contact with representatives of the avant-garde such as Hans Richter, Iwan Puni and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as other artists from dadaism and constructivism. In 1924, she moved to Paris and studied with André Lhote and later at the Académie Moderne with Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. Her works from this time at first show distinct Cubist influences. However, encounters with artists such as Piet Mondrian, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp led to an increasing geometrization of her work.





She also came into contact with Paul Klee in 1927, when, as a guest student, she attended courses given by him, Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus in Dessau. As she was far more experienced than most of her fellow students, we may assume that she was less interested in the concrete teaching content than in the artistically charged atmosphere of the Bauhaus.

‘Paris makes an incredibly old-fashioned impression after the Bauhaus.’ -- Florence Henri, letter to Lou Scheper, 29 August 1927

It was particularly Moholy-Nagy’s idea of a ‘New Vision’, and her exchange with Lucia Moholy, that encouraged Henris interest in photography. Even though she was very successful as a painter and involved in several exhibitions, in the end it was photography that brought her the greatest fame and allowed her to become one of the most important representatives of that same New Vision.

Henri’s photographs are distinguished by careful composition, an exciting use of light and shade, unfamiliar angles and a deliberate play with focus and blurring. Mirrors and metal balls allow simultaneous perspectives and open up pictorial spaces beyond visible reality. Even during Henri’s lifetime, her works were shown in numerous exhibitions and printed in newspapers and magazines. She also made a name for herself as an advertising photographer. While her late works – during the Second World War she devoted herself to painting again because of prohibitions and a shortage of materials – are very different from her early work, all phases of her career share a constant interest in composition as well as questions of perception and vision.

With some 80 works, mostly photographs and paintings, but also drawings and collages, the exhibition in the Zentrum Paul Klee traces Florence Henri’s artistic development in the middle of the European avant-garde.