Interior Garden

At the onset of WWII, the visionary Dada artist Hannah Höch retreated to a secluded house on the outskirts of Berlin, fleeing persecution for her radical collage work and her unflagging opposition to fascism. In the decades that followed, the surrounding garden became her artistic muse, but it was also a means of survival: its fruits and vegetables were a vital source of sustenance during wartime, and its soil served as the hiding place for her priceless collection of Dada artworks, deemed "degenerate" by the Nazi regime. Eighty years later, this richly illustrated yet deeply researched book reimagines Höch's garden from an artist's perspective. It brings together Höch's botanical collages and garden photographs with deep archival cuts exploring her connection with writer Til Brugman; new art by the artists Scott Roben and Johanna Tiedtke, based on visits to Höch's garden; and an essay by the writer Alhena Katsof that understands Höch's collage practice as a form of pruning. Together, these elements interweave past and present, private and public, personal and political, offering new views into Höch's lush refuge. Scott Roben is an artist and writer living in Berlin. He holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. His writings on art have appeared in Frieze, Art in America, and Texte zur Kunst. Johanna Tiedtke is an artist living in Berlin. She has earned MFA degrees from both the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Her works have been exhibited at the Villa Romana in Florence, at the Austrian Cultural Center in New York, and at the Museum Marta in Herford, among others. She has been awarded stipends from the DAAD and Kunstfonds Bonn.