Lotte Laserstein

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Lotte Laserstein (1898—1993), German painter and portraitist.

Laserstein created her greatest works in the period between the two world wars. After World War II, her works consisted of inoffensive portraits which lacked the vigor of her early work. While Laserstein was a Jewish artist, her early work was typical of both the avant-garde New Objectivity movement and the extremely traditional backward-looking trends in German art of the period. Her works were peopled with attenuated intellectuals such as one sees in the portraits of Christian Schad (the Portrait of Baroness Wassilko, for example), but her figures also often had a strong, cold, and athletic look that would have made them approprite for Nazi propaganda posters. A painting of a lady tennis player, bursting with strength, is a good example of the type. The realistic style of her paintings seems very close to the reactionary art of the period.

Laserstein's masterpiece was the large (about 8' wide) 1930 painting Abend uber Potsdam (Evening Over Potsdam) or The Rooftop Garden, Potsdam, a frieze of friends enjoying a meal on their terrace, with Potsdam's skyline arrayed in the far distance. The mood is pensive, full of ennui, and the picture achieves the deepest emotion in any of her works.

Laserstein was rediscovered in 1987, when Thomas Agnew and Sons and the Belgrave Gallery organized a joint exhibition and sale of works she had retained in her personal collection, including Abend uber Potsdam.