Lotte Laserstein

(Germany, 28/11/1898 - 21/01/1993)

I and My Model (1929-30)

Laserstein was a trailblazer in Germany’s Weimar Republic, she exhibited her work in Germany and throughout Europe wherein she explored gender stereotypes and identity, but was forced into obscurity with the rise of the Nazi party who labelled her a ‘three-quarter Jew’ and her work as ‘degenerate’, leading to a large portion of her work being seized, along with more than 15,000 pieces from other artists, and displayed in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich.

Like so many women artists from throughout history, Laserstein’s artistic career was roadblocked early on when she was barred from studying at Germany’s Royal Academy and so resolved to study art history. However, she quickly moved to the Akademische Hochschule in Berlin when they began admitting women, and she would be one of the first women to complete a course at the Academy.

Adopting a modernist style long before many of her contemporaries, she had her finger on the pulse of her time and her work was soon met with acclaim allowing her to establish her own studio in 1927. Through the next decade, she continued gaining popularity but was forced to flee Germany to Sweden under the guise of an exhibition at the Galerie Modern which allowed her to take a large portion of her work out of Germany. She remained in Sweden for the rest of her life.

Despite her considerable popularity before the War and her continued success after arriving in Sweden, she never recovered the same recognitions as before. It wasn’t until the 1980s that she began to come back into focus and was given a major retrospective at the Verborgenes Museum in Berlin in 2003.

Image: Lotte Laserstein, I and My Model (1929-30). Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 69.5 cm. Private collection.