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Cover: 648. ’Im Atelier (Ernst und Traute Rose)’. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed circa 1931. Oil on paper 49 x 36 cm.Estimate: SEK 8 000 – 10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909
658. Self portrait. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in 1920s. Pencil on paper 18 x 12 cm.
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Lotte Laserstein
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 ¾ 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 travelled 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.
Laserstein tried to build a new life in Stockholm, making a living mainly by commissioning portraits. She struggled to enter new art circles emphasizing modernism and abstract painting. She applied to join the Swedish Artists’ Association, KRO but was denied several times, which was a personal defeat. She was not considered sufficiently modern, and her consistent adherence to realism during the dominance of artistic abstraction in the post–war decades probably contributed to her lack of a significant breakthrough in Sweden.
Laserstein received a classical academic education, and her work often contains references to art history. But in her artistically expansive phase during the 1920s and 1930s, she also drew on contemporary popular culture in her motifs. The liberating fashions for women influenced her at the time: wearing loose–fitting dresses, cutting her hair short, dressing in an avant–garde style and highlighting androgynous features. Laserstein liked to depict modern emancipated women playing sports or sitting alone in a café. Her art is considered part of the ’new objectivity’ and is at once traditionally figurative and discreetly rebellious. People were Laserstein’s primary subject, and she painted thousands of portraits during her life. She could make a living from art throughout her life, and her clients included well–known personalities from the aristocracy as well as the politics, business and culture.
In 1952, Lotte Laserstein was commissioned to portray the then County Governor of Kalmar, Ruben and Helga Wagnsson. As a result, she began commuting between Kalmar and Stockholm. She took a liking to Öland, where she bought a summer cottage in the early 1950s. In 1954 also acquired an apartment in Kalmar. Laserstein continued to paint portraits but also devoted herself to flower still lives and landscapes. At exhibitions in Kalmar, she exhibited new oils, drawings, watercolours and pastels. Her studio and home were located on Norra Långgatan in Kalmar, where her major works from the Berlin period were hung.
In 1987, Laserstein’s paintings came to the attention of two prestigious galleries in London, marking the beginning of an international rediscovery. In 2003 she was also recognized in Germany with an exhibition at the Museum Ephraim–Palais in Berlin. Anna–Carola Krausse, who also wrote her doctoral thesis on Lotte Laserstein and a presentation of her life and work, was responsible for the German exhibition and its catalogue. ”Meine einzige Wirklichkeit” was the theme of the Berlin exhibition, a quote from Lotte Laserstein, who saw art as the reality she lived in and for. In Sweden, her work was first highlighted in a memorial exhibition at Kalmar Museum in 2004, then at the Jewish Museum and later at Bror Hjorth’s House in Uppsala.
At the moment, works by Lotte Laserstein is on display in the grand solo exhibition ’Ett delat liv’ ( A Divided Life), May 6 – October 1, 2023, at Moderna Museet in Malmö and later in Stockholm. The exhibition, curated by Anna–Carola Krausse, is the largest exhibition of Laserstein’s art in the Nordic region to date.
659. Self portrait. Signed Las. Executed in the 1920s. Pencil on paper 8.5 x 14 cm. Estimate: SEK 8 000 – 10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
Estimate: SEK 40 000 – 50 000 kr / EUR 5 460 – 7 270 (d)
The tender and sensitive portraits of children show Laserstein’s skill as a draughtsman. Among the children depicted here is little Petra, the daughter of the artist’s favourite model in Sweden, Madeleine ”Dete” Jaraczewsky.
640. Portrait of a farmers boy. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the 1920/30s. Oil on paper 27 x 20 cm.
639. ’Petra’. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Probably executed in the late 1930s. Oil on paper 24
Estimate: SEK 50 000 – 60 000 kr / EUR 4 550 – 5 460 (d)
645. Nine portraits. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the late 1920s. Oil on paper 43
Estimate: SEK 40 000 – 60 000 kr / EUR 3 640 – 5 460 (d)
x 31 cm.
x 61 cm.
664. Sleeping baby. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Pencil on paper 24 x 14.5 cm.
Estimate: SEK 8 000 – 10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
656. ’Petra’. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the 1930/40s. Oil on paper 43 x 66 cm.
Estimate: SEK 40 000 – 50 000 kr / EUR 3 640 – 4 550 (d)
Right: 660. Girl with her hair up. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Pencil on paper 13 x 19.5 cm.
Estimate: SEK 8 000 – 10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
Right: 649. Reclining model. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated 1956. Pastel crayon on paper 60 x 47 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 – 40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
651. Portrait of Anders Celsing. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the 1950/60s. Canvas 41 x 33 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 – 40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
Right: 650. The American girl. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the 1950s. Canvas 88 x 59 cm.
Estimate: SEK 80 000 – 100 000 kr / EUR 7 270 – 9 090 (d)
638. Portrait of Nora Bigner. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated 1957. Canvas 46 x 42 cm.
Estimate: SEK 70 000 – 80 000 kr / EUR 6 360 – 7 270 (d)
Among the portraits offered for auction are several commissioned portraits made in Sweden and a painting by Laserstein’s friend Nora Bigner. The two met in 1938 through Galerie Moderne. Over the years, Laserstein developed a close friendship with Nora and Folke Bigner, who also organized several exhibitions of her art in their apartment in Stockholm.
641. Portrait of Dr Winter. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated 1946. Panel 100 x 81 cm. Estimate:
Estimate: SEK 200 000 –250 000 kr / EUR 18 200 – 22 700
647. Portrait of Else Becker. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated 1952. Canvas 99 x 80 cm.
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Portrait of the sculptor Walther Beyer who fled to Stockholm from Nazi Germany with his wife, Marianne.
643. Portrait of Walter Beyer. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated -51. Canvas 39 x 36 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 –40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
648. ’Im Atelier (Ernst und Traute Rose)’. Signed Lotte Laserstein.
Executed circa 1931. Oil on paper 49 x 36 cm.
Estimate: SEK 60 000 –80 000 kr / EUR 5 460 – 7 270 (d)
642. The Neumans. Signed Lotte Laserstein and dated 1970. Canvas 49 x 59 cm.
Estimate: SEK 40 000 –50 000 kr / EUR 3 640 – 4 550 (d)
655. At the theater. Executed in the 1930s. Oil on paper, 35 x 31 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 –40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
Right: 652. Portrait of a couple. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Oil on paper 35 x 50 cm.
Estimate: SEK 60 000 –80 000 kr / EUR 5 460 – 7 270 (d)
Right: 644. By the beach Skanör/Falsterbo. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the late 1930s. Panel 51 x 65 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 –40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
The collection includes numerous drawings and sketches on paper made during Laserstein’s years in Berlin. It includes both self-portraits and nude studies of her friend and favourite German model, the artist and photographer Traute (Gertrud) Rose. Rose appears in several of Laserstein’s most famous paintings, including ’Abend Uber Potsdam’, 1930.
646. Traute. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the late 1930s. Red chalk on paper 66 x 38 cm.
Estimate: SEK 30 000 –40 000 kr / EUR 2 730 – 3 640 (d)
662. Traute in bed. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Pencil on paper 10 x 16 cm.
Estimate: SEK 8 000 –10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
661. Traute, nude . Pencil on paper 17.5 x 12 cm
Estimate: SEK 8 000 –10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
Estimate:
Estimate:
657. Self portrait. Signed Lotte Laserstein. Executed in the 1920s. Pencil on paper 18 x 12 cm.
SEK 8 000 –10 000 kr / EUR 727 – 909 (d)
663. Gottfried Meyer. Signed. Pencil on paper 9.5 x 17 cm.
SEK 8 000 –10 000 kr / EUR 727 - 909 (d)
All lots with a lower estimate value of 15 000 SEK and above in the Art section of Modern Art and Important Winter/Spring’s hammer sales are searched against the Art Loss Register database.
Estimates are given in Swedish kronor (SEK) and € (EUR). Bukowskis general terms and conditions for buyers and sellers, bidding instructions, and special terms and conditions for individual lots can be found at bukowskis.com.
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