Florence Henri (28 June 1893 – 24 July 1982)[1] was a surrealist artist; primarily focusing her practice on photography and painting, in addition to pianist composition.

She would find herself landlocked to Berlin during the first World War, supporting herself by composing piano tracks for silent films.

Henri's most important artistic training would come from the Bauhaus in Dessau, in 1927, where she studied with masters Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, who would introduce her to the medium of photography.

During this time, she met Jewish German critic and art historian Carl Einstein who became a mentor and close friend until his death in 1940.

[4] After exhibiting works in the "Exposition de l'Académie Moderne" at the Galerie Aubier in March 1927, Henri enrolled at the Bauhaus in Dessau.

[3] 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'.

Her work was compared to that of the photographers Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy and Adolphe Baron de Mayer, as well as with the winner of the first prize at the exhibition and Bauhaus director, Herbert Bayer.

Having set up her portrait studio in Paris in 1928, by 1930 she was teaching classes of her own which included future successful photographers Gisèle Freund and Lisette Model.

[7] As the second World War approached with the occupation of the Nazi Party, there was a noticeable decline in her photographic work which would have been considered degenerate art.

[8] Photographic materials would have become increasingly hard to obtain and Florence Henri returned to abstract painting until her death in the 1980s.