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Lotte Laserstein - portraits and landscapes



Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993) was born in East Prussia, her father died when she was only four years old, and her mother and grandmother raised her in what is now Gdansk and Berlin. In 1927 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin as one of the first female students and was immediately successful. She quickly became known on the city’s art scene for her skillful portraiture, especially of young modern women in the 1920s Weimar Republic. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, her promising career was cut short as she was categorized as a 3⁄4 Jew (her grandparents were Jewish, but her parents were not), following the ideology of the time. As a result, she was increasingly excluded from the art scene.

However, an invitation to exhibit at Galerie Moderne in Stockholm in 1937 allowed her to leave her home country. She traveled from Berlin in 1937 and shipped most of her works to Stockholm. The exhibition took place, and she was able to remain in Sweden on a three–month visa. She made new friends in Stockholm, some of whom helped her enter a sham marriage, thus obtaining Swedish citizenship. Read more