Henri, Florence (1895–1982)

American avant-garde photographer. Born in New York City in 1895; died in Compiègne, France, in 1982; studied music in Paris, Italy, and Berlin; studied art in Berlin; attended Académie Moderne, Paris, 1924; attended the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany, 1927; married Karl Anton Koster, in 1924 (divorced 1954); no children.

Identified with the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s, Florence Henri was born in New York City to a French father and German mother. She pursued an early interest in music, studying piano in Paris, Italy and Berlin, then embarked on a brief concert career. Concurrently, she began art studies, first at Kunstakadamie, in Berlin, and later in Paris with Ferdinand Leger, as well as Amédée Ozenfant who with Charles Le Corbusier had founded an abstract school of painting known as Purism. Married in 1924, Henri continued her studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, where, under the influence of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Joseph Albers, she began to explore photography. Some of her early experimental portraits, combining Bauhaus and Purist elements, were published in the Dutch journal 110 in 1928.

In 1929, Henri returned to Paris and opened a studio, where she specialized in portraits and also worked on fashion and advertising projects. That year, she was represented in two important exhibitions: Photografie der Gegenwart, in Essen, Germany, and Film and Foto, in Stuttgart. A one-woman exhibition of her work was held in Paris in 1930. By 1931, Henri had become well-known for her portraits, which included likenesses of many of the avant-garde artists of her day, including Hans Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alberto Giacometti. Her portraits, as well as her still lifes and abstractions, are characterized by the use of multiple mirrors and geometric objects, such as beams, rods, and steel balls, and are considered precursors of the Newconstructivist work of the 1980s.

Florence Henri spent the war years in Paris, where she continued to photograph and paint. She moved to Bellival, France, in 1962, and devoted her later years to abstract painting. Her photographs, paintings, and collages were exhibited throughout the 1970s, including a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1970–72). A major retrospective was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and then toured in 1990.