Grete Stern

(Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Germany 1904 – Buenos Aires, Argentina 1999)

She studied graphic arts in Stuttgart. In 1927 she began to study photography with Walter Peterhans, continuing her studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau. With her friend Ellen Auerbach, they created a graphic design and experimental photography studio named ringl + pit. In 1933, with Hitler in power, she emigrated to London. She married the Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola and together they traveled to Buenos Aires where they settled permanently and opened a photography and advertising studio. In 1935, together with Coppola they presented the first exhibition of modern photographic art in Buenos Aires, at Sur magazine. In 1943, Grete held her first solo show in Argentina. Between 1948 and 1952 she made the weekly photomontages for the illustration of Dreams in Idilio magazine. In 1975 her first photographic exhibition was held in Germany after the war, at the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin. In 1981 a great retrospective exhibition of her work was presented at the San Telmo Foundation in Buenos Aires. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) presented the retrospective exhibition From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola.