Marta Hoepffner

From 1929 to 1933, Marta Hoepffner (German, 1912-2000) studied painting, photography and graphics at Frankfurt/Main art school (today Städel School) with German artist Willi Baumeister. In 1934, she opened her own photo studio in Frankfurt. The following years, she practiced experimental, abstract photogram and collage work clandestinely. She gained her living with portraits and passed the master’s certificate in 1937. The Frankfurt studio being destroyed, she reopened the studio in Hofheim upon Taunus in 1944, including a private photography school since 1949. After WWII, Hoepffner renewed her contacts with Baumeister and other avantgardists. A member of German Werkbund since 1947, she started publishing and exhibiting nation-wide. In the late 1950s, she turned to abstract color photography and subsequently to light kinetic objects. Since the late 1970s, her oeuvre has been shown in retrospectives in Liechtenstein and Germany. In 1997 and 1999 she was honored with the Maria-Sibylla-Merian Prize for women artists and the State Prize of Hesse respectively. In 2019, the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen dedicated the exhibition Wege in die Abstraktion. Marta Hoepffner & Willi Baumeister to the artist and her teacher.