Renowned Pioneering Portrait Artist Lotte Laserstein Reemerges at TEFAF-Maastricht
Plonked on an armchair, a woman donning a beret and a fur coat that exposes her crimson frock, gazes intently with pursed lips. Her relaxed yet tense pose screams urgency and determination, one hand in her pocket and the other showcasing a mind-blowing diamond ring and a gold bangle. Her hair, wavy and styled, accentuates earrings that dangle like baubles.
This woman oozes fierce femininity and ambition, her stylish appearance framed by a background grid of antiquated art. Think of it as a double portrait of female power, with artist and subject both radiating might. Lotte Laserstein, a German-Swedish painter born in 1898 and deceased in 1993, captures gallerist Signe Schultz, co-owner of Stockholm's Galerie Moderne, in all her glory.
Picture Lady in a Fur Coat (The Gallerist Signe Schultz), painted in 1941, gracing a wall at Agnews' booth at TEFAF-Maastricht, the epic global art fair now open to the public after two days of star-studded previews. Agnews, a London-based gallery showcasing art from the 15th to the 20th century, embodies TEFAF-Maastricht's extensive yet meticulous offerings, taking art enthusiasts on a historical journey spanning 7,000 years via more than 260 top-tier dealers from 20 nations.
Among their vast and finicky collection of paintings, works on paper, and sculptures starting from the Renaissance and Baroque Old Masters, Thomas Agnew & Sons – established in 1817 – champions women artists. They discovered Laserstein in 1987 (while she was still alive) and have since then ensured her rightful place among the most influential and skillful women artists of the 20th century. In 2017, Agnews dedicated an exhibition to Laserstein titled Lotte Laserstein's Women, displaying her characteristic, insightful portraits of women.
Laserstein kickstarted her art training at a school managed by her aunt and went on to be one of the rare women at Berlin's prestigious Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Fine Arts) between 1919 and 1925, learning from prominent classic painter-etcher Erich Wolfsfeld. Following her Academy's gold medal win in 1925 and critical acclaim for her initial solo exhibition at Gurlitt's in Berlin in 1930, Laserstein took up a variety of jobs, including creating decorative art and illustrating an anatomy text.
The rise of Nazism jeopardized Laserstein's life and career when, in 1934, she was labeled under new Nazi racial laws as "three-quarters Jewish" and barred from publicly exhibiting her work. A year later, she had to give up her studio due to a scarcity of artists' materials. Laserstein relocated to Sweden in 1937, and her work started gaining recognition the same year, with two paintings exhibited in Paris' Salon and an exhibition at the Galerie Moderne. The rest of her life was spent in Sweden, and she became a member of the Swedish Academy of Arts.
TEFAF-Maastricht's display confirms that Laserstein's work remains as relevant as ever. A forerunner, she opted for an androgynous appearance that would look contemporary today, and delved into the intricacies of womanhood and female identity by depicting her subjects honestly and honorably. Her frequent muse and favorite model, German actress and singer Traute Rose (1903-1989), is featured in intimate paintings such as My Studio and At the Mirror. Born Gertrud Süssenbach, Rose first worked as Laserstein's tennis coach. They married Sven Marcus in 1938 to secure Swedish citizenship, but they never lived together. Süssenbach married writer Ernst Rose, but some believe the artist and her muse were lesbians. Despite homosexuality being legal between consenting adults in Sweden since 1944, it was still classified as a mental illness until 1979. Lesbian relationships or not, both women defied conventional feminine norms, embodying the New Woman, a feminist ideal that originated from the term coined in 1894 by Irish-English feminist writer Sarah Grand to describe independent women striving for radical change. What counts most today is the quality of her painting and the potency of her enduring visual narratives.
- Lotte Laserstein, a lesbian artist, captured the fierce femininity and ambition of Lotte Damen, a German-Swedish gallerist, in her painting Lady in a Fur Coat (The Gallerist Signe Schultz).
- Despite facing adversities such as the rise of Nazism and being labeled as "three-quarters Jewish," Laserstein, a forerunner in exploring womanhood and female identity, advocated for honesty and honor in her works, as evidenced in her paintings of Traute Rose, a fellow feminist defying conventional norms.
- Agnews, a gallery championing women artists, showcases Laserstein's work as relevant today, celebrating her role in the feminist movement of the 20th century and her contributions to the visual narratives of lesbianism and the New Woman ideal.
