Irene Bayer

Irene Bayer was born as Irene Angela Hecht in Chicago on 28 October 1898 and grew up in Budapest. In 1920 she began studying at the Berlin University of the Arts. She applied to the Bauhaus in 1923 but was not accepted. She then moved to Paris and audited classes at the Sorbonne and the École des Beaux-Arts. She established connections with the avant-garde there. In 1925 she married Bauhaus member Herbert Bayer. She then attended the preliminary course at the Bauhaus without being officially enrolled. In 1926 she began training as a photographer at the State Academy of Graphic Arts and Books in Leipzig. From then on, she documented life and work at the Bauhaus as well as her husband’s works. She additionally created portrait and advertising photos. Several of her images were used for Bauhaus publications. László Moholy-Nagy also published a number of her photos in an essay on photography. In 1928 the Bayers left the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin. In 1929 Irene Bayer’s work was presented at the “Film und Foto” exhibition in Stuttgart. She stopped working in photography when her daughter was born later that year; she had been separated from the child’s father, Herbert Bayer, since 1928. In 1938 Irene Bayer moved to the US, where she worked as a translator. She also briefly returned to Germany after the Second World War to work in this role for the American military administration in Munich. Irene Bayer died in Los Angeles on 12 July 1991.