An Unknown Artist

Lotte Laserstein "Self Portrait 1924" (private collection)

It is sobering to those of us who make art to continually find visual artists whose work, though unknown to us is a new revelation. Such an artist is Lotte Laserstein, a painter who lived through most of the 20th century but was in the end virtually unknown. I ran across her work in an online piece about a show at the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Ms. Laserstein's work is a true discovery and deserves much wider recognition.  

Lotte Laserstein was born in 1898 in what was then East Prussia and is now Poland. After her father died she moved with her mother to Danzig (Gdansk) and thence to Berlin, where she received extensive art training, eventually opening her own studio in 1927. She exhibited widely during those early Weimar years and was quite successful. She even sold a lovely oil, "Im gasthaus (In the Tavern)," to the city.

"Im gasthaus (In the Tavern)" 1927

But after the National Socialists (Nazis) seized power she was unable to exhibit or to teach because of her Jewish ancestry. Happily she was able to emigrate to Sweden and then became a citizen of Sweden, avoiding the Holocaust. She continued her work but slipped from public notice into obscurity for almost the remainder of her life. She did participate in a handful of shows toward the end of her years..

This exhibition in Frankfurt, coupled with an earlier one in Berlin in 2003, ought to bring much wider notice of her fine body of work.

"Russisches madchen mit puderdose (Russian Girl with Compact)" 1928

The Frankfurt show focuses on her early years during the Weimar Republic. The exhibition comprises paintings and drawings from the 1920s and 30s, when she was becoming well-known. Perhaps the most satisfying of the works exhibited in Frankfurt is "Russisches madchen mit puderdose (Russian Girl with Compact)", a painting she submitted to a contest by a cosmetics company. The painting gives us two images of the subject studying her hairstyle while holding her own mirror. The painting is a tour-de-force that reminded me of Norman Rockwell's famous "Triple Self Portrait," which gave us the same kind of invention and forthrightness. This particular work was in a municipal collection in Sweden until purchased by the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt a few years ago.

The exhibtion continues from now until March 2019. If you can't go to Germany, there are many examples of Ms. Laserstein's work to be found on the Internet.