Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada

Angelika Hoerle (1899-1923) and her artist husband Heinrich Hoerle were protagonists in the Dada movement in Cologne, alongside Max Ernst and Johannes Baargeld. Between 1919 and her tragic death from tuberculosis in 1923, Hoerle built an outstanding oeuvre of Dada collages, caricatures, linocuts and drawings–some of which was acquired by Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp’s famous Societe Anonyme collection, with other works going to the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the rest of which was sadly destroyed by the Nazis as degenerate art. Hoerle brought to Cologne Dada’s ranks a fully formed Marxist and feminist politics, and when Dada proved too dogmatic to contain her, she and Heinrich formed the breakaway Stupid Group. The Comet of Cologne Dada situates Hoerle among the artistic and political ferment of Weimar Germany, as a key figure whose artistic drive and political conscience were unthwartable and exemplary.