Alice Lex-Nerlinger

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Alice Lex-Nerlinger (born October 29, 1893 as Alice Pfeffer in Berlin-Kreuzberg ; died July 21, 1975 in East Berlin ) was a German painter, graphic artist , illustrator , set designer and photographer. It belonged to the artistic-political avant-garde proletarian revolutionary orientation of the Weimar Republic . In her work, she articulated topics from the political left and the women's movement. Her picture Paragraph 218 from 1931, with which she provocatively addressed the ban on abortion at the time, was taken up again by the women's movement in the 1970s.

biography

Alice Pfeffer was born in Berlin-Kreuzberg as the youngest of six children of lamp manufacturer Heinrich and his wife Nathalia Pfeffer. From 1911 to 1916 she trained as a painter and graphic artist at the teaching institute of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin . She felt connected to the modern artists around Herwarth Walden in his gallery "Der Sturm" in Berlin. After marrying Oskar Nerlinger in 1918, she worked on his photograms and films. In the 1920s she also took the stage name Lex. In 1928 she became a member of the KPD and made numerous posters. Like her husband, she had been a member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists (ASSO) from around 1929 . In 1929 she took part in the “important” international film and photo exhibition of the German Werkbund in Stuttgart and Berlin.

Section 218
Alice Lex-Nerlinger , issued in 1931

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

In her pictures she took the side of the working class, especially the women from the proletariat, and showed her strength in solidarity. In 1931, at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition , she showed a picture made with spray technology to oppose the arrest of doctors Friedrich Wolf and Else Kienle to protest who were charged with abortion: From the silhouette of a faceless pregnant woman emerges a group of women who are bracing themselves against a gigantic black cross with "Paragraph 218" written on it. In doing so, she provoked protests from church representatives as well as SA leader August Wilhelm von Prussia , who succeeded in confiscating the picture. It was picked up again decades later by the feminist women's movement of the 1970s .

In 1932 she presented a large-format painting Feldgrau creates Dividende in an exhibition , which showed a dead soldier hanging in barbed wire while in the background wagons loaded with war material were leaving an armaments company, and thus drew the ire of the national press. Like John Heartfield , she also used the possibilities of photomontage.

After the handover of power to the NSDAP and its German national alliance partners, she was briefly arrested on suspicion of high treason. There were house searches, she was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and was banned from working. She destroyed part of her work and ceased all public activities during the entire period of National Socialism , but continued to work in secret. In 1939 she went to Italy for a long time . Her husband was able to continue teaching as a teacher at a secondary school and even take part in the Great German Art Exhibitions from 1939 to 1944 with landscape watercolors.

After the end of the Nazi regime, Alice Lex-Nerlinger returned to Berlin to work as a freelancer and taught nude drawing and landscape painting at the Steglitz Adult Education Center. In 1945 she and her husband and other former ASSO members were among the founders of the Association of Socialist Artists , which later became part of the Association of Visual Artists . In 1946 she took part in the 1st German Art Exhibition in East Berlin together with other artists from the tradition of proletarian revolutionary art such as Oskar Nerlinger , Heinrich Ehmsen , Lea Grundig , Hermann Bruse , Otto Nagel , Horst Strempel and Magnus Zeller . She now joined the SED. From 1947 to 1949, Oskar Nerlinger published the magazine Bildende Kunst , of which his wife was a member of the editorial board and in which she published articles and illustrations. As part of the Bitterfelder Weg concept , Lex-Nerlinger went to industrial companies, portrayed apprentices and workers.

In a major retrospective, the Academy of the Arts of the GDR showed the works of Alice Lex-Nerlinger and Oskar Nerlinger with earliest works, those from the proletarian-revolutionary phase of the 1920s and 1930s, socialist-realistic works from the years after the transfer of power of the GDR. The exhibition was then shown in West Berlin by the New Society for Fine Art .

She was awarded an honorary pension (1960) for her work, which she received from the government of the GDR with the support of the German Academy of the Arts, although she was not a member of the academy herself, and with the GDR Patriotic Order of Merit (1974).

The Hidden Museum in Berlin presented a retrospective exhibition in 2016 on the initiative of the American art historian Rachel Epp Buller.

Exhibitions (selection)

Magazine publications by the artist (selection)

  • The mural as a requirement of our time. In: In: Fine arts. Magazine for painting, graphics, sculpture and architecture. Berlin. 3rd year volume 3/1949, p. 92/93

literature

  • Marion Beckers (Ed.): Alice Lex-Nerlinger 1893–1975. Photo mechanic and painter , Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86732-245-4 . Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition in the Hidden Museum, Berlin
  • Wolfgang Hütt, German Painting and Graphics in the 20th Century, Berlin (GDR) 1969
  • Alice Lex and Oskar Nerlinger. In: Lothar Lang : Encounters in the studio. Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1975, pp. 23-29
  • Petra Jakoby, collectivization of the imagination? Artist groups in the GDR between appropriation and inventiveness, Bielefeld 2007
  • National Museums in Berlin (ed.), Otto-Nagel-Haus. Department of proletarian revolutionary and anti-fascist art in the National Gallery. Guide to the exhibition. Introduction: Friedegund Weidemann, Berlin (GDR) 1985
  • Maike Steinkamp, ​​The Unwanted Legacy. The reception of "degenerate" art in art criticism and exhibitions and museums of the Soviet occupation zone and early GDR, Berlin 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography Alice Lex-Nerlinger, arteffekt-berlin.de (pdf) ( Memento from June 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Andres Janser / Arthur Rüegg, Hans Richter. The new apartment. Architecture, film, space, Baden (Switzerland) 2001, p. 19.
  3. ↑ Cristina Fischer, Against Church and State. The "Hidden Museum" in Berlin is showing a retrospective by the communist artist Alice Lex-Nerlinger (1893–1975), in: Junge Welt , June 17, 2016, No. 139, p. 15.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Hütt, German Painting and Graphics in the 20th Century, Berlin (GDR) 1969, p. 284.
  5. ↑ Petra Jakoby, Collectivization of Imagination? Artist groups in the GDR between appropriation and inventiveness, Bielefeld 2007, p. 122f.
  6. ↑ Maike Steinkamp, ​​The undesirable heritage: The reception of "degenerate" art in art criticism and exhibitions and museums of the Soviet occupation zone and early GDR, Berlin 2008, p. 101.
  7. ↑ ZK of the SED congratulates, in: Neues Deutschland, October 30, 1973, see: [1] .
  8. ^ New Society for Fine Arts, Alice Lex-Nerlinger / Oskar Nerlinger. Painting, graphic, photo graphic, October 1st, 1975-18. November 1975, see: [2] .
  9. ^ Rosa von Schulenburg, foreword, in: Marion Beckers (Ed.), Alice Lex-Nerlinger 1893–1975. Photo mechanic and painter, Berlin 2016, pp. 7–8, here: p. 7.
  10. ^ Carolin Haentjes: artist Alice Lex-Nerlinger. Art for snobs? No, for the people. Der Tagesspiegel, April 25, 2016 .
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personal data
SURNAME Lex-Nerlinger, Alice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfeffer, Alice (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Kreuzberg
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1975
Place of death East Berlin