{{Short description|German-Swedish painter (1898–1993)}} {{Infobox artist | name = Lotte Laserstein | image = Lotte Laserstein by Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski.jpg | caption = Lotte Laserstein painting "Evening over Potsdam" photographed by Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski in 1930 | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1898|11|28|df=y}} | birth_place = Preussisch Holland, East Prussia, German Empire | death_date = {{death date and age|1993|1|21|1898|11|28|df=y}} | death_place = Kalmar, Sweden | education = Berlin Art Academy | field = Painting | training = | movement = | works = | patrons = | awards = Gold Medal, Berlin Art Academy (1925) | spouse = }}
'''Lotte Laserstein''' (28 November 1898 – 21 January 1993) was a German-Swedish painter.<ref name=indy>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lotte-laserstein-1475374.html Obituary], Caroline Smyth, Feb 1993, The Independent, Retrieved 30 May 2016</ref> She was an artist of figurative paintings in Germany's Weimar Republic. The National Socialist regime and its anti-Semitism forced her to leave Germany in 1937 and to emigrate to Sweden.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.apollo-magazine.com/lotte-laserstein/|title=Lotte Laserstein|date=2019-06-20|website=Apollo Magazine|language=en-US|access-date=2020-03-27}}</ref> In Sweden, she continued to work as a portraitist and painter of landscapes until her death. The paintings she created during the 1920s and 1930s fit into the movement of New Objectivity in Germany.<ref name="krausse-2006">{{Cite book|last=Krausse|first=Anna-Carola|title=Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993). Leben und Werk.|publisher=Reimer Verlag|year=2006|location=Berlin}}</ref>{{rp|11}}
==Life== Laserstein was born in Preussisch Holland, German Empire in 1898. Her father, Hugo, was a pharmacist, and her mother, Meta, was a pianist, piano teacher, and a porcelain painter.<ref>Stroude, Caroline, and Adrian Stroude. “Lotte Laserstein and the German Naturalist Tradition.” Woman's Art Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1988, pp. 35–38., http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358361.</ref> Christened as a child, she grew up in an assimilated German-Jewish household.<ref name="krausse-2006" />
She received her artistic training at the Prussian Academy of Arts (''Preußische Akademie der Künste''), which she entered only shortly after female students were allowed. Here, Laserstein studied under Erich Wolfsfeld.<ref name="krausse-2006"/>{{rp|49–53}}<ref name="indy" /> In her final two years at the academy, she advanced to become one of his 'Atelier Meisterschüler' or 'star pupil'. This entitled her to her own studio, as well as free access to models.
The paintings she produced between her graduation in 1927 and 1933 in Berlin are considered to be her best works, and were shown in 20 exhibits across the city's galleries and museums.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Schroeder|first=Kristin|date=2019|title=An Ambivalent Elegy: Lotte Laserstein's Evening Over Potsdam (1930)|journal=Art History|volume=42|issue=4|pages=808–826|doi=10.1111/1467-8365.12461|s2cid=202533531 |issn=0141-6790}}</ref> Laserstein favored female models and the representation of female lifeworlds blended "social representation with painterly presence".<ref name="krausse-2006" /> While her oeuvre encompasses approximately 10,000 works, only 300 paintings and 100 drawings are verified for her Berlin years.
After her emigration to Sweden, she took on mostly commissioned portrait works. Her attempts to save the lives of her mother and her sister, Käte, from Nazi persecution by bringing them to Sweden failed. Her mother was murdered in 1943 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and Käte spent three years in hiding (died in Berlin in 1965).
Berlin in the 1920s was a center of cultural production as well as political and economic struggle.<ref>Comini, Alessandra. ''Woman's Art Journal'', vol. 15, no. 2, Old City Publishing, Inc., 1994, pp. 56–57, {{doi|10.2307/1358610}}.</ref> Laserstein painted cadavers to illustrate text books to obtain money during the period of hyperinflation.<ref name="indy" />
During this time, women were growing in independence and were increasingly able to enter the workplace. Laserstein depicted contemporary women of many fashions, including New Woman types, who adopted a more masculine look, and female nudes. As a single professional woman, Laserstein herself embodied the New Woman, and her androgynous look is evident in her many self-portraits, for example, ''Self-portrait with A Cat'' (1928) at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery.<ref name=":1">[http://www.germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/lotte-laserstein/ Lotte Lasserstein] at Leicester's German Expressionist Collection. Retrieved 17 March 2017</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/stories/ten-women-artists-of-jewish-heritage-represented-in-uk-collections|title=Ten women artists of Jewish heritage represented in UK collections|date=22 September 2020|author=Lydia Figes|website= Art UK|access-date=27 September 2020}}</ref>
During the Nazi period in Germany, Laserstein emigrated to Sweden, where she stayed in Stockholm and the city of Kalmar. It has been suggested that this move contributed to her legacy falling in obscurity in Germany. <ref>{{Cite web|date=2022-01-28|title=Berlin museum that championed forgotten women artists for almost 40 years closes due to lack of funds|url=https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/01/28/berlin-museum-that-championed-forgotten-women-artists-closes-due-to-lack-of-funds|access-date=2022-01-28|website=The Art Newspaper - International art news and events}}</ref> Laserstein traveled and painted in many places around the world after The Holocaust. Notably, she visited Berlin after the war and traveled to Israel with her friend Dr. Walter Lindenthal. <ref>https://guide.modernamuseet.se/stockholm/en/collection/lotte-laserstein/emigranten-dr-walter-lindenthal/</ref> She died in Kalmar on January 21, 1993.
==Works== Her most famous paintings, including ''Die Tennisspielerin'' (''The Tennis Player'', 1929), contributed to the verism of New Objectivity movement but also showed continuity with German Naturalism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Stroude|first1=Caroline|last2=Stroude|first2=Adrian|date=1988|title=Lotte Laserstein and the German Naturalist Tradition|journal=Woman's Art Journal|volume=9|issue=1|pages=35–38|doi=10.2307/1358361|jstor=1358361}}</ref> Laserstein's masterpiece was the large (about 7– 8 feet wide) 1930 painting ''Abend über Potsdam'' (''Evening over Potsdam''), a frieze of friends sharing a meal on their terrace, with Potsdam's skyline arrayed in the far distance. The painting was so large that it required the cooperation of multiple friends to transport it.<ref name="indy" /> The elegiac scene references Leonardo da Vinci's ''Last Supper'' and Jan Vermeer von Delft's ''Milkmaid'' in order to convey the temporality and political stalemate of 1930.<ref name=":2" />
In 2023, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston purchased a self-portrait of Lotte Laserstein simply titled "Self Portrait". It was painted around 1932 and shows the artist looking out at the viewer with a subtle smile and a brush raised to her lips. <ref>{{cite web | url=https://collections.mfa.org/objects/704533/selfportrait;jsessionid=7F7312801BD8E0ECCD68505AE008B919?ctx=94a90d76-2772-497d-ac4d-4e73772055f5&idx=4 | title=Self-Portrait }}</ref>
==Legacy== Laserstein was rediscovered in Germany in 1987, when Thomas Agnew & Sons and the Belgrave Gallery organized a joint exhibition and sale of works from her personal collection, including ''Abend über Potsdam'', which is now in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.<ref>[http://journals.gold.ac.uk/make.html ''Women Artists Slide Library Journal'' '''22''' (April–May 1988). Retrieved 5 November 2014] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141105183554/http://journals.gold.ac.uk/make.html |date=5 November 2014 }}</ref> Laserstein attended the exhibition together with her close friend and model of many decades, Traute (Gertrud) Rose.<ref name=indy/>
Her painting ''Traute Washing'' was the first purchase by the National Museum of Women in the Arts with its own funds.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/01/27/womens-museum-makes-its-first-purchase/e7cda79e-5da1-4888-b3ab-86c4df9c471b/ "Women's Museum Makes Its First Purchase,"] ''Washington Post'', January 27, 1988, D 1, 11. Retrieved 17 March 2017</ref>
In 1993, the first retrospective of Laserstein's work occurred in Kalmar, Sweden, to which she donated some of her paintings.<ref>{{Cite web|title=LOTTE LASERSTEIN {{!}} Judisk Krönika {{!}} 1 December 1983 {{!}} Newspapers {{!}} The National Library of Israel|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/jdskrn/1983/12/01/01/article/32|access-date=2022-02-23|website=www.nli.org.il|language=en}}</ref>
In 2003, the first comprehensive retrospective of Laserstein's oeuvre was held in Berlin at the Verborgene Museum.<ref>{{Cite web|title=LASERSTEIN, LOTTE - Das Verborgene Museum|url=https://www.dasverborgenemuseum.de/artists/laserstein-lotte-en|access-date=2022-01-28|website=www.dasverborgenemuseum.de}}</ref> In-depth research was carried out by Anna-Carola Krausse which was synthesized in the exhibition catalogue, ''Lotte Laserstein: My Only Reality''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Lotte Laserstein: meine einzige Wirklichkeit = Lotte Laserstein : my only reality|publisher=Philo Fine Arts|year=2003|isbn=9783364006093|location=Dresden}}</ref>
In 2009, the Berlinische Galerie acquired the artist's documentary estate as a private donation. In addition to photographs of her work, the material includes sketchbooks, private and professional correspondence, documents on her participation in exhibitions, and books from Laserstein's library. The main part of the estate covers Laserstein's time in Sweden; hardly any documents have survived from the Berlin period.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Estate of Lotte Laserstein |url=https://berlinischegalerie.de/en/collection/specialised-fields/estate-of-lotte-laserstein/ |access-date=2023-01-27 |website=berlinischegalerie.de |language=en}}</ref>
Donation certificates from Laserstein's friends in her honor from the Jewish National Fund and Magen David Adom show her connection to Israel and the Jewish community. <ref>[http://edamagazin.de/queer-jewish-artists-in-the-archive-passing-the-paintbrush/]</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * {{SKBL}}
==External links== *{{Art UK bio}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Laserstein, Lotte}} Category:1898 births Category:1993 deaths Category:People from Pasłęk Category:Artists from East Prussia Category:German people of Jewish descent Category:20th-century German painters Category:20th-century German women painters Category:Jewish women painters Category:Jewish painters Category:German emigrants to Sweden