Stern, Grete

Grete Stern played an important role in the modernization of photography in Argentina, particularly with the technique of photomontage. Born in Germany, she trained as a graphic designer and photographer with Walter Peterhans, and later at the Bauhaus. In 1929, she and Ellen Auerbach opened a photography and advertising design studio, ringl+pit, where they experimented with innovations both in form and content, subverting the traditional image of women in advertising. The move to Argentina took place in 1935 with her husband, the photographer and filmmaker Horacio Coppola. That same year, they organized a photography exhibition that would become emblematic for its modernity and opened a new photography and advertising studio.

Between 1948 and 1952, during the Peronist government, Stern created her famous series "Dreams," consisting of nearly 150 photomontages made to illustrate a column titled "Psychoanalysis Will Help You" in the women's magazine "Idilio." Combining humor and surrealism, Stern managed to convey powerful messages denouncing the situation of women in society at the time. Her photos are in important private collections and museums and institutions both in Argentina and abroad, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires (MNBA), and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art in Valencia.

Her works have been exhibited both individually and collectively in countless exhibitions and publications. Among them, notable are the large retrospective of her photographic and design work by the Fundación San Telmo in Buenos Aires in 1981; the publication in 1995 of the catalog-book "Grete Stern, Photographic Work in Argentina" by the National Arts Fund; the edition of "Grete Stern, Book of Portraits Made in Argentina," with selection and texts by Sara Facio, in 1988; and the two exhibitions of the complete series of the Idilio photomontages held in 1995 and 2003 at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM, Valencia, Spain) and at the Recoleta Cultural Center (Buenos Aires).