If we refer to a “lost generation,” Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993) is certainly part of one. She had to leave Germany after the National Socialists came to power, and her displacement was followed by long-lasting obscurity.
The start of Laserstein’s artistic career had been promising: In 1927 she completed her studies with distinction, as one of the first women to attend the Berlin Academy of Arts, and she quickly made a name for herself in the art metropolis. Her works show affinities to the New Objectivity movement, but they lack the extremely cool, dissecting smoothness of that style. Laserstein’s self-confident view of the New Woman, her technical virtuosity, the way she played with traditional and modern image formulas, as well as her synthesis of objectivity and sensibility, monumentality and intimacy lend her paintings a captivating contemporaneity and timeless topicality.