Lotte Laserstein was a German-born Swedish painter best known for her realistic portraits of women in urban settings. Laserstein’s paintings combine the psychological qualities of New Objectivity painters like Christian Schad with the precise naturalism, contour lines, and smooth paint application of the 16th-century painter Hans Holbein.
Born on November 28, 1898 in Preussich Holland, Germany to a Jewish family, Laserstein went on to study under Erich Wolfsfeld at the Berlin Academy, where she was introduced to and influenced by the works of Adolph Menzel. Due to her Jewish heritage, she was forced to flee Nazi Germany, emigrating to Sweden in 1937. Today, her works are in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin among others. The artist died on January 21, 1993 in Kalmar, Sweden.
Interesting little fact: a few years ago on Reddit a black and white photograph made a couple of rounds on different subreddits. It showed the impressive Old Stockholm telephone tower that connected hundreds of telephone lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stockholm_telephone_tower
After her migration to Sweden Laserstein did portraits of a couple of personalities, including the Swedish politician Carl Juhlin-Dannfelt. In that portrait you can see the telephone tower in the background.
I’ve never seen anything like that structure before! I was walking around Normalm in 2022 and got to see the former bank where the hostages got Stockholm syndrome (allegedly…). A fascinating city.
Thanks
Sort of looks like a castle crossed with the russian woodpecker.
thata a damn cool name to have
