Grete Stern
Grete Stern (9 May 1904 – 24 December 1999) was a German-Argentine photographer. Between April 1930 and March 1933, she studied at the Bauhaus.
Also recorded as Grete Ringl · Grete Coppola · Stern, Grete, 1904-1999
Grete Stern

Grete Stern · Public domain
- Name
- Grete Stern
- Born
- 9 May 1904
- Birthplace
- Wuppertal-Elberfeld, German Empire
- Died
- 24 December 1999
- Place of death
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Occupation
- Photography
- Nationality
- Germany · Argentina
- Fields
- photography · painting · visual arts
- Education
- Bauhaus · State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart
- Languages
- German
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Documentary summary
Grete Stern (9 May 1904 – 24 December 1999) was a German-Argentine photographer. Between April 1930 and March 1933, she studied at the Bauhaus.
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Note VALÉORINE
Grete Stern (1904–1999) was an Argentine and German artist, designer and painter, among other activities. Born in Elberfeld, the artist died in Buenos Aires.
Grete Stern studied at Bauhaus and State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. The artist was a member of Ringl + Pit and worked in Buenos Aires and Great Britain. Grete Stern was active in painting, photography and visual arts.
Languages used include German. Works by the artist are held at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Museum of Modern Art, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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gnd · 10194018-X · wikidata · Q215618 · wikipedia · Grete Stern
In this article
Biography
Biography
Grete Stern studied at Bauhaus and State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is photography, painting and visual arts. Places of work recorded in the authority are Great Britain and Buenos Aires. Work by Grete Stern is recorded in the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Tate, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Articulos electricos para el hogar - Grete Stern, 1950
Grete Stern

Grete Stern: Self-portrait, 1943. Gelatin silver print, printed 1958, 11 x 8 11/16″ (28 x 22 cm). Estate of Horacio Coppola, Buenos Aires
Grete Stern (1904-1999)
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Grete Stern • Born — 9 May 1904 • Birthplace — Wuppertal-Elberfeld, German Empire • Died — 24 December 1999 • Place of death — Buenos Aires, Argentina • Occupation — Photography
Early life
Early life
The daughter of Frida Hochberger and Louis Stern, Grete Stern was born on 9 May 1904 in Elberfeld, Germany. She often visited family in England and attended primary school there. After reaching adulthood, from 1923 to 1925 she studied graphic arts at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Stuttgart, but after a short term working in the field she was inspired by the photography of Edward Weston and Paul Outerbridge to change her focus to photography. Relocating to Berlin, she took private lessons from Walter Peterhans.
Career
Career
• Illustration — Grete Stern, Self-Portrait, 1943 In 1930 Stern and Ellen Rosenberg Auerbach founded ringl+pit, a critically acclaimed, prize-winning Berlin based photography and design studio. They used equipment purchased from Peterhans and became well known for innovative work in advertising. The name ringl+pit is from their childhood nicknames (Ringl for Grete, Pit for Ellen). Intermittently between April 1930 and March 1933, Stern continued her studies with Peterhans at the Bauhaus photography workshop in Dessau, where she met the Argentinian photographer Horacio Coppola. In 1933 the political climate of Nazi Germany led her to emigrate with her brother to England, where Stern set up a new studio, soon to resume her collaboration there with Auerbach. Stern first traveled to Argentina in the company of her new husband, Horacio Coppola in 1935. The newlyweds mounted an exhibition in Buenos Aires at Sur magazine, which according to the magazine, was the first modern photography exhibition in Argentina. In 1958, she became a citizen of Argentina. • Illustration — Grete Stern. Articulos eléctricos para el hogar (Electrical appliances for the home) 1950 In 1948 Stern began working for Idilio, an illustrated women's magazine, targeted specifically at lower/lower-middle class women. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stern created Los Sueños as illustrations for the woman's magazine Idilio and its column "El psicoanálisis te ayudará" (Psychoanalysis Will Help You). Readers were encouraged to submit their dreams to be analyzed by the 'experts' as an aid for its readers to find "self-knowledge and self-aid that would help them succeed in love, family and work". Each week, one dream would be selected, analyzed in depth by the expert, Richard Rest, and then illustrated by Stern through photomontage. Stern created about 150 of these photomontages, of which only 46 survive in negatives. Stern's photomontages are surreal interpretations of the readers' dreams that often subtly pushed back on the traditional values and concepts in Idilio magazine by inserting feminist critique of Argentinian gender roles and the psychoanalytic project in her images. The Idilio series has often been compared to Francisco Goya's Sueños drawings, a series of preliminary drawings for his later body of work, Los Caprichos; they have also been directly compared to Los Caprichos themselves. • Illustration — Desnudo III, 1946 Stern provided photographs for the magazine and served for a stint as a photography teacher in Resistencia at the National University of the Northeast in 1959 and continued to teach until 1985.
Death
Death
In 1985, she retired from photography, but lived another 14 years until 1999, dying in Buenos Aires on 24 December at the age of 95.
Identity
Identity
Grete Stern is recorded as photographer, painter, designer and artist.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1904
Grete Stern was born in 1904 at Elberfeld.
1999
Grete Stern died in 1999 at Buenos Aires.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Elberfeld.
Birth place
Buenos Aires.
Death place
Legacy
In 1995 documentarian Juan Mandelbaum made a documentary about Studio Ringl + Pit, which was reviewed in the New York Times In 2015 her work was the subject of an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art called "From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horatio Coppola."
Collections
Collections
Stern's work is held in the following permanent collections: • The Jewish Museum • The Museum of Modern Art • The Metropolitan Museum • The J. Paul Getty Museum
Documents and archives
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q215618: Grete Stern
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Grete Stern”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 10194018-X, Mostra di Grete Stern, Sogni (2004 : Ravello).
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Gobierno de Buenos Aires. Grete Stern. Biography.
- 2.Stern, Grete. From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola. Museum of Modern Art. 2015. 9780870709616.
- 3.Mandelbaum, Juan, and Clara Sandler. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Grete Stern. Jewish Women's Archive. 1 March 2009.
- 4.James Crump. "Stern, Grete." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Updated and revised 27 September 1999. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
- 5.O'Connor, John J. Two Proto-Feminists Remember Weimar. The New York Times. 1997-02-06. 0362-4331.
- 6.Plotkin, Mariano Ben. Tell Me Your Dreams: Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture in Buenos Aires, 1930-1950. The Americas. 55. 4. 601–629. April 1999. 0003-1615.
- 7.El psicoanálisis le ayudará. Idilio. 2. August 16, 1949.
- 8.Marcoci, Roxana. "Photographer Against the Grain: Through the Lens of Grete Stern" in From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola. Museum of Modern Art. 21–36. 2015. 9780870709616.
- 9.O'Connor, John J. Two Proto-Feminists Remember Weimar. The New York Times. 6 February 1997.
- 10.From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola | MoMA.
- 11.Guardian Staff. Grete Stern. the Guardian. 2000-01-18.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 9
- Thurman, Judith. Grete Stern. The New Yorker. 92. 42. 100. December 19–26, 2016.
- Foster, David William. Dreaming in Feminine: Grete Stern's photomontages and the parody of psychoanalysis. Ciberletras. 2004.
- Lavin, Maud. “Ringl + Pit: The Representation of Women in German Advertising, 1929–33 in The Print Collector's Newsletter, Vol 16, No. 3 (July – August 1985), pp. 89–93
- Guardian Staff. Grete Stern. the Guardian. 2000-01-18.
- Marcoci, Roxana and Sarah Hermanson Meister, From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015.
- Wieder, Christina. ‘Montages of exile. Photographic techniques and spatial dimensions in the artwork of Grete Stern.’ Jewish Culture and History 21, no.1 (2020): 42-65. DOI: 10.1080/1462169X.2020.1701846.
- Roberts, Jodi. ‘A City in Dispute: Grete Stern’s Photographs of Buenos Aires, 1936-1956.’ Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 24, no.2 (2015): 123-152. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/13569325.2015.1040742.
- Corrigan, Anna. ‘Laughter as Feminist Intervention in Grete Stern's Suenos,’ PhD Diss., Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal), 2016. ProQuest (30880494).
- Laxton, Susan. ‘Psicofotografía: Grete Stern and the Administration of the Unconscious.' October, no.172 (2020): 35-67. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1162/octo_a_00392 .
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 10194018-X, Mostra di Grete Stern, Sogni (2004 : Ravello).Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q215618: Grete SternWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
The authorities additionally record the headings Grete Ringl, Grete Coppola and Stern, Grete, 1904-1999. Her recorded language was German. She married Horacio Coppola. One child is recorded: Silvia Coppola. Stern worked in photography, painting and visual arts. She belonged to Ringl + Pit. She worked at Great Britain and Buenos Aires.
Identity and origins
Career and activity
Recognition and collections
Work by Grete Stern is
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Tate, Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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