Yva (Else Neuländer-Simon)

 Yva, Ramona in the little flying machine, 1929

Else Neuländer (1900-1942) was born in Berlin where she opened her first photo studio in 1925. Yva soon became a popular fashion and portrait photographer and published in many prestigious newspapers and magazines such as Die Dame, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and Münchner Illustrierte Presse. At the height of her career, she employed up to ten employees in her studio. Yva briefly cooperated with photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke in 1926. 

Yva, Charleston, 1926

Since 1929 Yva worked for the Ullstein publishing house. Friedrich Kroner, the editor of the Ullstein-Verlag, commissioned Christian Schad in 1930 to paint a double portrait showing two young women, which would serve as a color cover for the publisher's magazine Uhu. Kroner wanted Schad to portray one of his female friends, in the company of Schad's girlfriend, Maika Lahmann. While Schad normally took his own photos, on this occasion he used a portrait of Maika and her friend which had been taken by Yva. He painted Freudinnen (Friends) during September-October 1930 in his Hardenbergstrasse studio, Berlin.

Christian Schad, Friends, 1930

Due to her Jewishness, Yva was prohibited from exercising her profession (Berufsverbot) after the Nazis had seized power in January 1933. Her studio was now officially run by her "arian" friend Charlotte Weidler. In 1936, the later famous photographer Helmut Newton began his apprenticeship in Yva's studio. Two years later, Yva had to finally give up the studio. She then worked as a radiographer in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin. In 1942, Yva and her husband, Alfred Simon, were arrested and deported to the Majdanek concentration camp where they were killed most probably in 1942.

Yva, Max Liebermann, from the series "Celebrities from behind", before 1930

The building in Berlin's Schlüterstraße 45, which was her last home and studio, now houses the Hotel Bogota. Yva's photos are displayed in the hall on the fourth floor - the former studio.

Ubaldo Oppi

He must have sensed the knives of pain in his own body to operate with them successfully. (Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart, 1929)

 Ubaldo Oppi, La giovane sposa, 1922

Ubaldo Oppi (1889-1942) was born in Bologna as the son of a merchant and spent his youth in Vicenza. He was largely self-taught as a painter staying in Germany and Austria between 1907 and 1909. In Vienna, he attended the lessons of Gustav Klimt and, at the same time, studied anatomy. After spending a year in Italy in 1911 he moved to Paris, where he sought to combine his experience of Secessionism with expressive elements and vibrant colors. Later, Oppi studied the Italian painting of the Tre-and Quattrocento as well as Picasso's blue period. Talking about Picasso: His lover at that time, Fernande Olivier, left Picasso during a stormy love affair with Oppi.

Ubaldo Oppi, Donna alla finestra, 1921

Towards the end of the World War I Oppi spent some time in Austrian captivity where he produced a series of drawings anticipating many design elements of the New Objectivity. After another stay in Paris (1919-1922), he settled in Milan where, in 1922, he founded together with Achille Funi, Mario Sironi and others the artist group Novecento Italiano. Although he immediately distanced himself ideologically, he used the group's organization until the late twenties to show his works not only in Italy but also abroad to a larger audience.

 

Ubaldo Oppi, Artist and Model (Self-Portrait), 1920

Portraits played an important role in Oppi's art. A hard linearity and almost frozen colors predominate. The cool and distanced portrait artist and his wife, both of 1920 gives the impression of a lack of communication. While Oppi is shown as a painter, his wife holds the score of a Mozart sonata in her hand, allegorically showing the union of the two arts.

 Ubaldo Oppi, The Three Surgeons, 1926

One of Oppi's most significant paintings, The Three Surgeons of 1926, displays a group of doctors with cold technical precision and accuracy. It might well be that this painting was inspired by Max Oppenheimer's Operation (produced during Oppi's stay in Vienna) and that it in turn influenced Christian Schad's famous 1929 operation painting (Schad stayed in Italy between 1920 and 1927 where he developped his style studying the Novecento Italiano artists).

Christian Schad, Operation, 1929

In Oppi's later years religious motives became increasingly important. 1928 and 1930-32 he produced large-scale wall paintings with Christian themes. Ubaldo Oppi died on 25.10.1942 in Vicenza.

 Ubaldo Oppi, The Surgeon, 1913

You can see more works of Ubaldo Oppi here in my Flickr set.

Christian Schad

 Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1930s

Christian Schad (1894-1982) was born in Miesbach, Bavaria as the son of a wealthy lawyer family. He studied at the Art Academy in Munich in 1913, but quit after a couple of months because he rejected any examinations. A pacifist, he fled to Switzerland in 1915 to avoid service in World War I, settling first in Zurich and then in Geneva. Both cities were centers of the Dada movement, and Schad became a Dadaist and witnessed the foundation of the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. 

Christian Schad, Imperial Countess Triangi-Taglioni, 1926

In this period he developed a close friendship with the writer and dadaist Walter Serner. Beginning in 1918, Schad created his own version of the Photogram (which later was named "Schadographs" by Tristan Tzara) where a contour picture is developed on light-sensitive platters. Schad's descriptions of his techniques were eventually used by both Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in their more extensive explorations.

 Christian Schad, Amourette, 1918 (Schadography)

Schad's paintings of 1915–1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism. Schad's most famous oil painting of that period, Kreuzabnahme (Cross-Decrease), was painted in grayish tones with Walter Serner as the model:

 Christian Schad, Kreuzabnahme, 1916

From 1920 to 1925, Schad spent some years in Rome and Naples, where he studied the Italian painters and was influenced by the new Italian Realism, notably by Ubaldo Oppi, Felice Casorati and the artistic group Novecento Italiano. In 1921 he started to paint in a sober, realistic style later referred to as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), displaying  his interest in the relationship of the individual to society and conveying a sense of isolation and alienation. Schad married a lady from Rome, Marcella Arcangeli,  in 1923.  A wondeful portrait of Marcella was painted three years later:

 Christian Schad, Marcella, 1926

In 1927 the family emigrated to Vienna where Christian and Marcella separated (she died 1931 in a bathing accident). Schad went to Berlin in 1928 and settled there, now painting some of the most significant works of the New Objectivity. He led a dandyesque life visiting salons, dance and night bars. He was involved with some drawings in a "Guide to the vicious Berlin". His figures and motifs reflect the "golden" glamorous side of the Twenties.

Christian Schad, Self-Portrait with Model,1927

Also in 1927 Christian Schad painted his above "Self-Portrait with Model", which today has become the best known and most reproduced work of the artist and the New Objectivity. As the "painter with a scalpel," he dissects himself and his lover with cool objectivity. His eyes are wary, the atmosphere of the picture is cool, almost icy. The people depicted have nothing to say. Schad reported later that the woman's face was that of a stranger he saw as a customer in a stationery shop. The "sfregio", the facial scar, is a kind of "proof of love": the women in Naples wore these scars with pride to show that they had a jealous husband or lover.

 Christian Schad, Loving Boys, 1929

After the Nazis had seized power in 1933, Schad's art was not condemned in the way that the work of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and many other artists of the New Objectivity movement was, and in 1934 he was even able to submit some works to the" Great German Art Exhibition". This may have been because of his lack of commercial success and because the paintings of that time no longer possessed the cool sharpness of his earlier work. Also, Schad withdrew into a sort of "internal exile", reducing his painting to a only a few works. 

Christian Schad, Dr. Haustein, 1928. Dr. Haustein was a dermatologist with a specialist interest in syphilis who serviced the prostitutes on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. In the late 1920s his home became a fashionable salon where many of the distinguished artistic and literary figures of the time would meet. Schad described the unique atmosphere there as being one of "extreme intellectual and erotic freedom where writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women:"

In 1935 Schad took over the management of a brewery operation (the family fortune had vanished in the 1929 stock market crash) and developped an intense interest in  East Asian mysticism. In 1936 the Museum of Modern Art in New York displayed some of his  early Schadography - without his knowledge. In search of a model Schad met the young actress Bettina Mittelstadt whom he portrayed in 1942. She became his second wife in 1947.

 Christian Schad, Bettina, 1942

After the destruction of his Berlin studio during a 1943 bombing raid Schad moved to Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. The city commissioned him to copy Grünewald's Virgin, a project on which he worked until 1947. Schad continued to paint in the 1950s in a softened, almost kitschy style. He died in Stuttgart on February 25, 1982.