This beautiful photomontage In the Desert (1927-9) by Hannah Hoch popped up from Christies this morning in an online auction from Amsterdam. I wish I had the 40-60 thousand Euros to bid as it's very special. Hoch was originally part of the Berlin Dada movement but then went her own more dreamy way.

These two big phallic looking things: they are meant to be Zeppelins! The horse slash dinosaur thing and the scarab scrambling around the parched earth are endearing. It's been exhibited at MoMA and other museums (just recently I saw another striking Hoch online at MoMA which is not on exhibit).

Hoch was a feminist and a lesbian at a time when that was rugged and she was apparently marginalized by her Berlin colleagues. At the time of this work, she was living more openly in Holland with a woman, and able to be freer, more expressive and indeed surrealist. She was part of the New Woman movement and wished to explore a deeper connection to her own ethnographic concerns.

In der Wuste, part of the Dr. Abigail von Maur collection, online auction at Christies.