Helmar Lerski

 Helmar Lerski, Yemenite Boy, 1933

Helmar Lerski (1871-1956) was born in Strasburg, then part of Germany, as Israel Schmuklerski. His parents were Jewish immigrants of Polish origin. In 1876 the family moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where they obtained Swiss citizenship. Lerski moved to New York in 1893 at the age of twenty-two to work as an actor, changing his name in 1896. He spent several years with a German theatre company in Chicago and Milwaukee, where he met his first wife, a photographer. 

 Helmar Lerski, A Boy, 1930

In 1911 Lerski began to experiment with photography by adapting dramatic stage lighting techniques to portrait photographs of fellow actors. In 1912, Lerski was encouraged to pursue a career in photography by Rudolph Dührkoop, who had come to St. Louis to demonstrate his photographic techniques. In 1914/15 he teached German language and literature at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1915, after more than twenty years in America, Lerski moved to Berlin, and after showing his portraits, was asked to become a cameraman at Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA studios), where he worked as a cameraman and expert for special effects for many films. 

 Helmar Lerski, The Metalworker, 1930

Between 1925 and 1927 Lerski was Technical Director for Schüfftan-Photography at Deutsche Spiegeltechnik GmbH & Co. This process was refined and popularized by the German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan while he was working with Lerski on Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis (1927). Lang wanted to insert the actors into shots of miniatures of skyscrapers and other buildings, so Schüfftan and Lerski used  specially made mirrors to create the illusion of actors interacting with huge, realistic-looking sets.

 Helmar Lerski, Transformations of Light (No.571), 1936

In 1931 Lerski published Köpfe des Alltags (Everyday Faces), a series of portraits of anonymous working-class figures. Extreme close-ups emphasized the archetypal characteristics of his models rather than their individuality. With fascism on the rise, Lerski immigrated to Palestine where he worked as a director and cameraman for documentary films. In 1937 he created his masterpiece, Transformation Through Light, on a rooftop terrace in Tel Aviv, in which he projected 175 different images of a single model, altered using multiple mirrors to direct intense sunlight towards his face at various angles and intensities. Siegfried Kracauer wrote about this series in his Theory of Film (Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 162):

 Helmar Lerski, Transformations of Light (No.569), 1936

"His model, he [Lerski] told me in Paris, was a young man with a nondescript face who posed on the roof of a house. Lerski took over a hundred pictures of that face from a very short distance, each time subtly changing the light with the aid of screens. Big close-ups, these pictures detailed the texture of the skin so that cheeks and brows turned into a maze of inscrutable runes reminiscent of soil formations, as they appear from an airplane. The result was amazing. None of the photographs recalled the model; and all of them differed from each other. 

 Helmar Lerski, Transformations of Light (No.569), 1936

Out of the original face there arose, evoked by the varying lights, a hundred different faces, among them those of a hero, a prophet, a peasant, a dying soldier, an old woman, a monk. Did these portraits, if portraits they were, anticipate the metamorphoses which the young man would undergo in the future? Or were they just plays of light whimsically projecting on his face dreams and experiences forever alien to him? Proust would have been delighted in Lerski's experiment with its unfathomable implications."

Helmar Lerski, Hand of a Graphic Designer, 1944

In 1948 Lerski moved back to Zurich, where he spent the rest of his life. Other photographic series of Lerski include Jewish Faces, Arabic Faces and Human Hands.

Aimé Barraud

Aimé Barraud (1902-1954), The Watercolourist

I have previously pointed to Art Inconnu's post about Swiss painter François Barraud. François had a brother, Aimé, who also was an excellent New Objectivity artist. Thanks to Art Inconnu you can see some of Aimé's works for the first time on the net. 

Théophile Robert

 

Théophile Robert, Lady in Black Dress, 1926

Théophile Robert (1879-1954) was born in Ried-sur-Bienne, Switzerland.  Between 1900 and 1907 he studied painting in Paris in various private art schools. After his studies Robert moved to Berlin where he stayed until 1909. He then returned to Switzerland, created his own studio in Saint Blaise near Neuchâtel and befriended Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, the future Le Corbusier. Between 1909 and 1918 Robert participated in many expositions.

Théophile Robert, After the Bath, 1921

In 1918, after the end of the war, Robert moved to Paris where he shared a studio with Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. On the basis of an advantageous contract with the gallery Druet, Robert could regularly exhibit his work in Paris and abroad. His success culminated in 1925 with ten exhibits worldwide. 

Théophile Robert, Danaïdes, 1928

 

In 1929 Robert returned to Saint Blaise. His work now became more and more religious, and he received numerous commissions to decorate churches. Théophile Robert died in Neuchâtel in 1954. The same year, the "Salle Théophile Robert" in the Fine Arts Museum of Neuchâtel was inaugurated where many of his works are on permanent display.

Niklaus Stoecklin

 Niklaus Stoecklin, Self-Portrait, 1918

The son of a middle-class Swiss merchant, Niklaus Stoecklin (1896-1982) grew up in his native Basel, developing a propensity for art at home. From his grandfather, an entomologist and illustrator of scientific publications, he inherited a passion for observation and the analytical transposition of flora and fauna into drawing. From April to August 1914 he studied applied art in Munich. When the war broke out, he returned to Basel, where he began to attend the Academy of Fine Arts; he staged his first solo show of paintings and graphic works in 1915. 

 Niklaus Stoecklin, Wig Stand Mannequin with Pear-Shaped Money-Box, 1929

The period from 1917 to 1919 was one of training and experimentation. Stoecklin became intrigued by the late Gothic masters - particularly Konrad Witz - and worked in close contact with the Expressionists Albert Müller and Ignaz Epper, drawing inspiration from their works. In 1918 he was one of the promoters of  Das Neue Leben (The New Life), a Basel art group, participated in its discussions about Cubism and Futurism, and became fascinated with Robert Delaunay’s Orphism. 

 Niklaus Stoecklin, Nelly or Street Girl, 1918

At the same time, Stoecklin earned a living by designing posters for the Wasserman graphics company, working for them regularly for about ten years. He began to be successful during this period: in 1917 the collector Georg Reinhart purchased his painting Casa rossa. The following year this very work was published in Das Kunstblatt, the journal that, in the early 1920s, would host the first extensive critical discussions of the emerging trend towards figurative art, a movement that would be dubbed Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). 

 Niklaus Stoecklin, Still Life with Burning Candle, Matchbox and Dead Moth, 1950

Stoecklin made his international debut in 1925: he was the only non-German artist to be represented at the ground-breaking Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Mannheim, where he presented the sizeable number of six paintings. In his essay Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism, published that year, Franz Roh included him in a list of exponents of post-Expressionist trends. In the second half of the 1920s Stoecklin travelled frequently and these journeys were a source of inspiration for several series of paintings and drawings. Between 1927 and 1930 Stoecklin stayed in Paris a number of times where he painted the following portrait of the dancer Tatjana Barbakoff (see my post about Gert Wollheim): 

 Niklaus Stoecklin, Tatjana Barbakoff, 1929

The Kunstmuseum in Winterthur and the Kunsthalle in Basel devoted extensive monographic exhibitions to him, respectively in 1927 and 1928. In the mid-1930s, several public institutions and important companies in Basel, such as Hoffmann-La Roche, commissioned him to design and execute murals. In the 1940s and 1950s he worked almost exclusively on book illustrations and advertising graphics, and as a professor at the Schule für Gestaltung in Basel he trained an entire generation of graphic artists. Starting in the 1970s, Stoecklin’s works were presented at international exhibitions devoted to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. You can see more of his works in my Flickr set.

François Barraud

François Emile Barraud, Untitled, 1930s

There are two excellent posts by Art Inconnu about the Swiss New Objectivity painter François Barraud. You can read them here and here.