A. Paul Weber

 A. Paul Weber, The Rumor, 1943

Andreas Paul Weber (1893-1980) was born in Arnstadt, Thuringia. He visited the secondary school in Arnstadt, and then for a short time, the Art and Crafts School in Erfurt. He joined the Wandervogel, a youth movement interested in cultivating a better lifestyle and a heightened appreciation of nature through hiking. Weber's attachment to nature was awakened by extenisively hiking through Germany. 

 A. Paul Weber, Leviathan, 1942

During the First World War, Weber was drafted into military service and sent as a railway pioneer to the Eastern Front where he worked as a draftsman and caricaturist for the magazine of the 10th Army. In 1928, Weber became a member of a political circle opposing Hitler and National Socialism, which was centered around Ernst Niekisch. Niekisch and his followers adopted the name of "National Bolsheviks" and looked to the Soviet Union as a continuation of both Russian nationalism and the old state of Prussia. 

 A. Paul Weber, The Informer, 1934

Niekisch's movement took the slogan of "Sparta-Potsdam-Moscow". Weber illustated books and periodicals for Niekisch's Widerstands-Verlag (Resistance Press). After a time in the underground, Niekisch was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to life imprisonment  for "literary high treason". He was released in 1945, by which time he was blind. Weber was imprisoned by the Nazis from July to December 1937. Following are a few  examples of Weber's caricatures for the Resistance magazine:

A. Paul Weber, The Meeting, 1932

The meeting between President Hindenburg and Hitler took place on August 13th, 1932, two weeks after the Nazi Party had become the strongest parliamentary party with 230 seats. Hitler is caricatured in the pose of corporal before his former commander in chief.

 A. Paul Weber, Der Schlag ins Leere, 1933

The above drawing, a "Michel" (the average German small guy) hammering a nail into his head, was Weber's response to Hitler's seizure of power.

 A. Paul Weber, Speculating on Death, 1943

Here, a capitalist war profiteers neatly brushes wooden grave crosses in view of the coming war. In a number of Weber's political drawings the mass of "humans" is replaced by the mass of crosses.

 A. Paul Weber, The Doom, 1932

 

The most famous of Weber's anti-Hitler drawings: the march of the crowd under Nazi flags to the mass grave.

 A. Paul Weber, Little Shark, n.d.

After the Second World War Weber continued to be a social commentator, with his criticism covering politics, justice, militarism, enviromental pollution, inhumanity, medicine and fanaticism in sports. In 1973, the A. Paul Weber Museum opened in Ratzeburg. In 1980, Weber died at the age of 87 in Schretstaken, a small village near Ratzeburg, where he had lived since 1936. 

 A. Paul Weber, The Man with the Golden Tooth, 1952

Weber left an extensive work of drawings and lithographies. Furthermore, he designed a number of commercial art and book illustrations (for example, to Reineke Fuchs, Till Eulenspiegel, Münchhausen and works of Hans Sachs).

The Nudes of Drtikol

 František Drtikol, The Soul, 1930

František Drtikol (1883-1961) was born in the mining town of Příbram, Bohemia. His father was the owner of a grocery store. He spent his childhood in his hometown and showed an early attraction for drawing and painting. František spent more time drawing and reading novels than working for the school. In 1898, Drtikol, a mediocre student, left school. He wanted to start a career as a painter but his father demanded an apprenticeship with Antonin Mattas, the local photographer, saying that painting does not provide sufficient security. During his three years as an apprentice and assistant to his master, Drtikol gained a solid base of professional practice.

 František Drtikol, Dancers, 1930

In 1901, Drtikol moved to Munich where he enrolled at the Lehr- und für Versuchanstalt für Photographie, opened a year earlier. Taking courses in physics, chemistry, optics and design, he distinguished himself quickly and was regarded the best student in his class. After his studies, in 1903 and 1904, Drtikol worked as an assistant in various photographic studios in Karlsruhe, Chur, and Prague. From 1904 to 1907, Drtikol completed his military service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1907, with financial support from his parents, he opened his photographic studio in Pribram. He produced portraits, landscapes, nudes, and made a report (using a magnesium flash) on  a coal mine. 

 František Drtikol, The Nudes of Drtikol, 1929

In 1910, Drtikol moved to Prague where he opened a studio with a partner, Augustine Skarda, who was primarily responsible for financial matters. He soon became the most prominent portraitist of the city, and his studio was visited by the personalities of the capital and illustrious visitors like the French writer Paul Valéry and the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. He shot portraits of some of the most important figures of his day: Czechoslovakia's first president Masaryk, his foreign minister Edvard Benes, and the composer Leos Janacek.

 František Drtikol, The Soul, 1931

Drtikol escaped the massacre of the First World War because he was assigned to back regiments, first in the vicinity of Prague, then in Hartberg, near Graz in Austria. After the war he resumed his activity in a studio on the fourth floor of one of Prague's remarkable buildings, a Baroque corner house at 9 Vodičkova, now demolished. Drtikol's early works, mainly landscapes, were influenced by Pictorialism, namely by Leonard Misonne and Robert Demachy. In the early 1920s, he abandoned painted decorations for the benefit of wooden ones consisting of simple geometrical patterns, cubes, cylinders, rectangular plates, or rounded forms, as in The Wave (below), one of his most famous images. The influence of Cubism, and Constructivism is evident in this part of his work.

  František Drtikol, The Wave, 1925 

Drtikol continued to produce symbolistic images, including many variations on the theme of Salome. His marriage with dancer Ervina Kupferova in 1920 increased his interest in dance and motion. Like Rudolf Koppitz, Drtikol often placed his models in settings emphasizing the tension of the body fixed between two phases of movement. Later, Drtikol began using paper cut-outs in a period he called "photopurism". These photographs resembled silhouettes of the human form. 

 František Drtikol, Dancers (Paper Cut-Out), 1932

In the 1920s and 1930s, Drtikol received significant awards at international photo salons. He sold his studio in 1935 and slowly drifted into obscurity. He now focused mainly on painting, Buddhism and philosophy. In 1945, Drtikol taught photography at The State School of Graphic Arts in Prague, but resigned after one year. František Drtikol died in Prague on January 13, 1961. He is buried in the cemetery of Příbram, his hometown. You can see more of his work in my Flickr set.

Albin Egger-Lienz

 Albin Egger-Lienz, Self-Portrait, 1923

Albin Egger-Lienz (1868-1926) was born near Lienz, Tyrol. His first teacher was his father who was a church painter. From 1884 to 1993 Egger-Lienz studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was influenced by Franz Defregger and French painter Jean-François Millet. From 1894, Egger-Lienz worked as a free artist in Munich. In 1899, he moved to Vienna and married Laura von Möllwals. He was co-founder of the Hagenbund, an Austrian group of artists that was active until 1930.

Albin Egger-Lienz, The Dance of Death Anno Nine, 1906 

 

In 1909, Egger-Lienz became a member of the Vienna Secession, but quit his membership seven years later. One year later, he was proposed a professorship at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. This was however prevented by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (whose assassination in Sarajewo was one of the causes of WW1) because of Egger Lienz' membership in the Secession, and because his above shown painting The Dance of Death Anno Nine (which had been shown in an exhibition for the 60th jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph), was considered to be not patriotic enough, and, given the advanced age of the honored Kaiser, could not be regarded as "pious".

Albin Egger-Lienz, The Old, 1914

In Egger-Lienz' oeuvre, the motif of death occupies a central position. In The Dance of Death, Death leads on the group of farmers. In the background is the Tyrolean struggle for freedom in 1809, but the theme is detached from the historic event and conceived as a monumental allegory. The four walk on as if they were in a dream, only half in possession of themselves, as if they had a premonition of their destiny. Leon Trotsky remembered an exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1909: "The most prominent participant in the exhibition was Albin Egger-Lienz. Remember his name! His "Haspinger" [Johann Haspinger was a Catholic priest and leader of the Tyrolese revolt against Napoleon], his "Sowers" are unquestionably perfect paintings". And Carlo Carrà, one of the most important theorists of Italian Futurism, described him as one of three prominent artists of the XIII. International Art Exhibition in Venice.

 

Albin Egger-Lienz, Haspinger, 1908

In 1912, Egger-Lienz started teaching at the art college of Weimar (one of his students was Peter Drömmer), but, in 1913, settled down in St. Justina (near Bolzano, South Tyrol), where he worked as a free artist. He taught at the school of arts in Klausen (Chiusa). From 1914 to 1917, Egger-Lienz was called up for military service. In this time he produced his masterpieces such as For the Nameless:

Albin Egger-Lienz, For the Nameless, 1914

Battlefield painters have the assignment of documenting everyday life in the tactical struggle for position and of recording the heroic deeds of soldiers. This was not the case with Egger-Lienz:. One could claim to see an element of heroisation in the lithograph 1915. However, in Field of Corpses dead corpses pile up in the trench, and the deformed expressivity of the bodies in Finale is an outcry against war:

Albin Egger-Lienz, Finale, 1918

Egger-Lienz also devoted his work to the tragedy of women whose men remained in the field, as in Women of War (below). The Mothers (1922) only receive hope under the sign of the crucified Saviour. The consequences of war are communicated by The Blinded (1918) in their baleful hopeless clumsiness.

 

Albin Egger-Lienz, Women of War, 1918

 

In 1918, Egger-Lienz turned down a professorship at the Vienna Academy. In his last years, he was declared honorary doctor of the Universitiy of Innsbruck. Albin Egger-Lienz died in St. Giustina, now a part of Italy, on November 4, 1926. You can see more works of Egger-Lienz at Zeno.

Jan Mankes

 Jan Mankes, Self-Portrait, 1911

Jan Mankes (1889-1920) was born in Meppel, Netherlands. At the age of fifteen he moved to Delft, where he worked as an apprentice painter in a glass factory from 1905 to 1908. He also attended evening courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. Mankes was so excited about the work of his fellow townsman, the etcher Derkzen van Angeren, that he himself chose to become a free artist. From 1909 he lived with his parents in a Heerenveen. Surrounded by chickens, geese and goats, he painted his silent masterpieces.

Jan Mankes, Winter in Eerbeek, 1917

In 1915, he married Annie Zernike, the first female minister in the Netherlands. The following year, the pair settled in Eerbeek, Gelderland,  hoping that this relocation would provide a healthier environment for Mankes, now suffering from tuberculosis. In the brief periods when Mankes was fine, he was constantly at work. In 1920, it became clear that Mankes would not recover. He died that same year.

Jan Mankes, Judaspenning in Japanse vaas, 1915

Jan Mankes has been characterized as the most tranquil Dutch painter. His work with its clean, understated colors and balanced compositions shows his great love for nature. It includes approximately two hundred paintings, fifty prints, and more than hundred sketches and drawings. His work is exhibited in his native Netherlands in the Scheringa Museum of Realism, the Museum of Modern Art Arnhem and the Museum Belvédère Heerenveen. There is also an excellent webpage showing many of his works.

Jan Mankes, Haan, 1913

Against Mussolini

Officially founded in March 1919, Fascism's programme initially attracted few supporters with its bewildering blend of right-wing nationalism and social reforms. Mussolini played on fears of an imminent Bolshevik revolution, presenting Fascism as the sole defender of law and order. With support for the movement increasing, the Liberal Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti invited Mussolini to form an anti-Socialist alliance in 1921 which led to the election of thirty-five Fascist Deputies. However, Mussolini was not satisfied to play a supporting role. The failure to suppress the Fascist "March on Rome" of 28 October 1922 revealed a fatal lack of political will to resist the rise of Mussolini’s movement, culminating in his appointment as Prime Minister at the end of the month.

Giacomo Balla, March on Rome, 1932

Mussolini was the first political leader to harness the techniques of theatre, the visual arts and the mass media to a personalised system of rule. On the one hand, Mussolini acknowledged the privileged position of creative autonomy and the artist's role in shaping a Fascist Italy (see my article Italian Modernism). But another key feature of the Fascist regime was an orchestrated personality cult. Busts and portraits of the Duce were situated in public buildings and private homes, while a number of larger monuments depicted him on horseback or helmeted in warrior mode. The cult was a product of the Duce's megalomania but it was also a peculiarly modern phenomenon. It was the result of a complex synergy of Italian nationalism, mass politics, visual culture, popular religion, celebrity and consumerism.

Duilio Cambellotti, La conquista della terra, 1934

Following the landing of Allied troops in Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was overthrown at a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism and imprisoned on the orders of his former colleagues, who signed an armistice on 8 September. However, having been rescued by German commandos, Mussolini was installed as the puppet leader of a new Fascist regime in the north of the country, now occupied by Nazi forces - known as "The Republic of Salò" after the town on the shores of Lake Garda that served as its administrative centre. As the Allies advanced north through an Italy divided in two by a bitter civil war, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland but was captured by partisans and executed on 28 April 1945.

Franco Garelli, Shooting, c. 1944

The exhibition Against Mussolini: Art and the Fall of a Dictator (shown at the Estorick Collection in London through December, 2010) relates to the decline of the cult. It brings together some of the diverse paintings and drawings produced in Italy and abroad throughout the Fascist era, but focuses particularly on the years immediately following Mussolini’s initial fall from power in 1943 and the period of civil war and resistance. This period witnessed the destruction of many Fascist symbols and images of Mussolini. Portraits in homes and local Fascist organisations were thrown out while larger works were attacked and defaced. Popular anger reflected the detachment from the cult that the hardships and setbacks of the war brought. Artists shared these feelings and in several cases anticipated them.

Tono Zancanaro, Gibbo is Pitied by Youth, 1944

The Estorick exhibition features a selection of satirical drawings by the Paduan artist Tono Zancanaro (1906-1985) depicting the grotesque figure of "Gibbo" (above) and his entourage - a thinly veiled caricature of Mussolini. (The name "Gibbo" was taken partly from the character of Gibbon in John Ford's film The Informer and partly from the animal). Similar in tone is the work of Mino Maccari (1898-1989), who is represented by images from his Dux series, which presents the dictator as a lascivious buffoon:

 Mino Maccari, Dux series - Mussolini, 1943

One of the most renowned exponents of post-war realist aesthetics was Renato Guttuso (1912-1987), who had also fought in the Resistance during 1944. His key works include the Picasso-inspired Massacre (below) and a study for his famous work Flight from Etna (1940). Considered by Guttoso to be his first politically-charged image in its symbolic depiction of peasants fleeing in terror from an encroaching wave of lava, the finished work was, ironically, the star of the state-sponsored Bergamo Prize of that year.

 Renato Guttuso, The Massacre, 1943

A section of the Estorick exhibition is dedicated to the equestrian statue of Mussolini that was inaugurated in the Littoriale stadium in Bologna in 1929. A large-scale work by Giuseppe Graziosi fused from Austrian cannons captured during the First World War, it remained mounted on a pedestal until the human figure was pulled down by an angry crowd in July 1943. The head was seized by loyal Fascists who conserve it to this day. The remainder of the statue was taken down after the war and was turned into two figures of a male and a female partisan which now stand at one of the city's gates. Mario Sironi painted the statue in 1935:

Mario Sironi, Cavallo e Cavaliere, 1935

I have previously written about Max Beckmann's vision of Mussolini's death. The British painter Merlyn Evans (1910-1973) was serving in Italy in April 1945 and actually witnessed the public exhibition of the corpses of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci and other members of the Fascist hierarchy in Milan's Piazzale Loreto. His painting The Execution (below) was made from his memory of this macabre spectacle, the jostling, jagged, abstract forms intending to represent the rage of the crowd:

Merlyn Evans, The Execution, 1945

Works from two painting cycles by Mario Mafai (1902-1965) entitled Demolitions and Fantasia (below) are also shown. The first chronicles Mussolini's destruction of large areas of ancient Rome to make way for Fascism's public works programmes and new districts such as the zona augustea. Although not explicitly political, these works have been seen in retrospect as covert denunciations of Mussolini’s megalomania. The Fantasia cycle is, by contrast, openly condemnatory of the violence and savage brutality of Fascism.

Mario Mafai, Fantasia no. 7 – Interrogation – Via Tasso, 1940-43

These art works works stand as testimony to a tragic phase in Italian history that preceded the rebirth of democracy. They also offer something more: a stark condemnation of the vanities of dictatorship and of the violence that is an intrinsic part of Fascism.

Kurt Schwitters - The Cathedral of Erotic Misery

 El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, 1924

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was born in Hanover, Germany, to a well-to-do family. His parents were owners of a ladies' wear shop. From early childhood Schwitters suffered from epileptic seizures, later he said that these experiences led him to art. He attended the Kunstakademie in Dresden from 1909 to 1914 (alongside with Otto Dix and George Grosz). Schwitter's early paintings were mostly landscapes and academic portraits. In 1915 he married Helma Fischer, a teacher. Schwitters began to construct his first Merzbau in 1915, the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hannover, Waldhausenstrasse 5. This took place very gradually. Early photos show the Merzbau with a grotto-like surface and various columns and sculptures, possibly referring to similar pieces by Dadaists, including the Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama by Johannes Baader, shown at the First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920. Works by Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, amongst others, were incorporated into the installation.

 Kurt Schwitters, The Cathedral of Erotic Misery - Merzbau - Hanover - 1924

Using wood and plaster for the basic structure of the cubistic assemblage, which also included carboard, scraps of metal, old furniture, leftover objects found in garbage bins, and items from his friends, such as Mies van der Rohe's pencil and Sophie Täuber-Arp's brassière. "Everything an artist spits out is art," Schwitters said. The word "Merz" has a variety of associations, starting from "Kommerz" (commerce) to Schmerz (pain) and ausmerzen (to discard). With "Merz", Schwitters defined his own unique movement, "in close artistic friendship with Core dadaism," as he wrote. After the death of his son Gerd, he incorporated his death mask in the Merzbau. Schwitters christened the gigantic work, which eventually extended through several floors and room, The Column and then as his Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Only the gallery owner and critic Herwarth Walden, the architectural historian Sigfried Giedion, and Hans Arp were allowed to see the most secret caves of the Merzbau. His visitors Schwitters greeted with his own onomapoetic language - "the language of the birds" - while sitting on a tree branch. 

 Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, reconstruction by Peter Bissegger 1981–3 (Sprengel Museum Hanover)

Schwitters was to come into contact with Herwarth Walden after exhibiting expressionist paintings at the Hanover Secession in February 1918, which led directly to meetings with members of the Berlin Avant-garde, including Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch and Hans Arp in the autumn of 1918. "I remember the night he introduced himself in the Café des Westens. 'I'm a painter', he said, 'and I nail my pictures together'", Raoul Hausmann later reported. Schwitter's poems and essays were published in Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm magazine. An Anna Blume (1919), Schwitters's first collection of verse, which appeared in the magazine, provoked a strong response. It parodied the high-flown language of love poetry, and was a critical and commercial success; it sold a 13.000 copies. 

 Cover of Anna Blume, Dichtungen, 1919

Hausmann Remembers

by Kurt Schwitters (c. 1920)

Then came Anna Bloom, and Kurt was famous.
"For all the wrong reasons, of course", he said,
but clearly, from his grin, he enjoyed it.
 

Anna Bloom is out of her tree!
    Anna Bloom is red.
    What colour is the tree?

That's how a schoolboy teases his sweetheart,
not satire at all; and in this age
(so we dadas proclaimed) art must be savage
- a frontal attack!

But Kurt held a mirror up to dada
- reversed its sneer
to a laughing face.
He called our southern tour "Anti-Dada"
and added an "h" to my Hanna(h)'s name
so he could read her backward.

Kurt Schwitters, Merzbild 46 A. Das Kegelbild, 1921

In 1920 Schwitters met Hans Arp, who introduced him to the new collage method, and made a lecture tour with Raoul Hausmann in Chechoslovakia. In 1922 he attended the Dada meeting in Weimar. However, Schwitters never became a friend of George Grosz, who once drove him from his door, saying "I am not Grosz." Schwitters replied after ringing the bell again: "I am not Schwitters, either." Grosz was rebellious and politically committed, Schwitters described himself ambiguously as "Bürger und Idiot" (Bourgeois and Idiot). Schwitters founded the Merz magazine in 1923; the last issue was published in 1932. Merz consisted of books, catalogues, poems and paitings. Numbers 14-17 contained children's books written by Schwitters, Kate Steinitz and Theo van Doesburg. You can see scans of the magazine here. Schwitters also composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate. The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters' heard recited by Hausmann in Prague in 1921. You can hear it here.

Kurt Schwitters, Construction for Noble Ladies, 1919

Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events. Merzbild 29a, Picture with Turning Wheel (1920, below), for instance, combines a series of wheels that only turn clockwise, alluding to the general drift Rightwards across Germany after the  failed Spartacist Uprising in January that year. Thanks to Schwitters' lifelong patron and friend Katherine Dreier, his work was exhibited regularly in the US from 1920 onwards. In the late 1920s he also became a well-known typographer. In 1928 Schwitters traveled in Norway, where he began to spend much of his time from 1931 onwards. In 1937, Schwitters was designated a "degenerate" artist by the Nazis and his works were shown in the Entartete Kunst exhibition. Schwitters left Germany for Norway, settling in Lysaker near Oslo. He never returned to the city of his birth. His wife Helma died of cancer in 1944 in Hanover.

Kurt Schwitters, Merzbild 29A, Picture with Turning Wheel, 1920 

When German troops invaded Norway, Schwitters fled in 1940 with his son for the United Kingdom on the ice breaker Fridtjof Nansen. Interned as an enemy alien by the British government he was held in interment camps for eighteen months. After being discharged from Hutchinson Square Camp at Douglas, Isle of Man, he settled in London. Schwitters had an exhibition in London in 1944 and in 1947 in New York and Basel, but his work did not attract significant popular or critical interest. Schwitters's Hanover Merzbau was completely destructed by Allied bombing raids on the night of October 8, 1943.

Kurt Schwitters painting in Norway, 1936

In 1944 a stroke left Schwitters temporally paralyzed on one side of his body. The next year he moved with Edith Thomas to Ambleside, in the Lake District. There he became a well known figure, although he did not talk about his past. His portraits of local residents were displayed in shops. With the financial aid from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Schwitters began to build in 1947 his third Merzbau (or the Merzbarn) into a stone barn At Elterwater. He never finished it. Schwitters died in solitude on January 8, 1948, in Kendal. Many artists have cited Schwitters as a major influence, including Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg, who said after seeing an exhibition of Schwitters' work in 1959, that "I felt like he made it all just for me." You can read more about Kurt Schwitter's here.

Ellen Auerbach (Pit)

Ellen Auerbach (1906-2004) was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, the daughter of Max Rosenberg and Melanie Gutmann. Her father was a successful businessman. Between 1924 and 1927 Rosenberg studied art at the Badische Landeskunstschule in Karlsruhe under Karl Hubbuch, where one of her fellow students was Hanna Nagel. In 1928, Auerbach continued her studies at the Academy of Art (Am Weissenhof) in Stuttgart. An uncle for whom she had done a bust gave her a 9 x12 cm camera and thus she discovered photography. Rosenberg thought that this new medium would be a better way to make a living than creating sculptures.

Grete Stern, Ellen & Walter Auerbach, c.1930

In 1929, Auerbach moved to Berlin to study photography with Walter Peterhans, who had been recommended by a friend for his excellent photographs and jazz record collection. At his studio Rosenberg met Grete Stern (see my article about her), Peterhans's only other private student. Ellen and Grete began a profound friendship that lasted throughout their lives. For Ellen Rosenberg the move to the capital was the beginning of a final rupture from her bourgeois background and from her family's traditional expectations for her. She had only a short period of lessons with Peterhans, because in 1930 he was named Master of Photography at the Bauhaus School for art and design in Dessau. 

Ellen Auerbach, Eckstein with Lipstick, 1930

Using the proceeds from an inheritance Stern bought Peterhans' equipment and with Auerbach established a studio to do advertising, fashion and portrait photography. They called the studio ringl+pit, after their childhood nicknames (ringl for Grete, pit for Ellen). The two young women also lived together in their studio. In the early 1930s, modern advertising was at its beginnings and left ample room for creative exploration. ringl+pit's advertising work represented a departure from current styles by combining objects, mannequins and cut-up figures in a whimsical fashion. 

 ringl+pit, Untitled, c. 1930

Their work explored a new way of portraying women, also in character with the image of the New Woman that was emerging. Stern's specialty was in graphic design, and she was more interested in the formal aspects of photography. Auerbach provided the more subtle and ironic touches that challenged the traditional representations of women in advertising and films.  As Auerbach explained, "We are very different people. She is more serious than I am. I’m a frivolous person. But we had a lot of fun together. She was serious and I frivoled."

ringl+pit, Edwin Denby and Claire Eckstein in Regimentstochter (Gaetano Donizetti), Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin 1930 

Auerbach and Stern also photographed friends and lovers whom they met through bohemian circles. These included the dancer Claire Eckstein and her friend Edwin Denby (above), the writer Marieluise Fleißer and the set designer, Walter Auerbach. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Walter Auerbach, who was active in leftist political circles, warned the women of the dangers ahead. Aware of the increasing political repression, they decided to leave Germany. Palestine was the only place Ellen could go to, thanks to a loan from Grete that allowed her to enter as a "capitalist". At the end of 1933 Ellen emigrated to Palestine and Grete left for London.  

Ellen Auerbach, Port of Alexandria, on the way to Palestine, 1933

Walter Auerbach also went to Palestine, and in 1934 they opened Ishon ("apple of my eye") in Tel Aviv, a studio specializing in children’s photography. At the same time Ellen started photographing everyday life in Palestine. This took her out of the studio and into the streets and villages. She was greatly affected by the difficulties in coexistence between Arab and Jews. In 1936, Grete Stern emigrated to Argentina. Auerbach left Palestine and tried to continue with Stern's London studio, but was unable to obtain a work and residency permit. One year later, Ellen married Walter Auerbach in order to emigrate to the United States, thanks to an affidavit they had received through a distant relative. They lived first in Philadelphia, where Auerbach continued to work as a children’s photographer in order to make a living. In 1938 one of her child photographs was selected for the cover of Life Magazine’s second anniversary issue. 

 Ellen Auerbach, Statue of Liberty, New York 1939

Ellen Rosenberg's parents stayed behind in Karlsruhe. In 1941, they were interned at the Gurs concentration camp in France, from where they were freed in 1944 by American troops. At the end of the war they returned to Karlsruhe - an unusual move for Jewish survivors. In 1940, Ellen and Walter Auerbach moved to New York where they were introduced to some avant-garde artists, among them Willem de Kooning, whom Auerbach photographed, and Fairfield Porter, a painter who would become a close friend. Ellen and Walter Auerbach were separated in 1945, but remained friends, and she kept his name. Ellen started visiting Great Spruce Head Island in Maine, the Porter family's summer place, where she continued her art photography, focusing on nature subjects and people on the island.

Ellen Auerbach, Renate Schottelius in New York, 1953

Between 1946 and 1949 Ellen Auerbach worked at the Menninger psychiatric institute in Topeka, Kansas. There she photographed and made two films on young children's behavior. In 1946, she traveled to Argentina to visit her brother and Grete Stern, and to Greece, Germany and Austria. Auerbach continued to travel extensively between the 1940s and 1960s, photographing landscapes and nature, as well as interiors, architecture, street scenes and portraits. 

 Ellen Auerbach, Sulphur Bath, Big Sur 1949

In 1954 she went to Great Spruce Island to visit nature photographer Eliot Porter, whom she had met through his brother Fairfield. He asked her to accompany him on a trip to Mexico to photograph churches. They went there in 1955–1956. When they returned they tried to interest publishers but it was not until thirty years later that their work received recognition. Mexican Churches was only published in 1987 and Mexican Celebration in 1990. After the Mexico trip, Auerbach no longer wanted to photograph and gradually stopped taking pictures. At the age of sixty, she embarked on a new career: until 1984 she worked as an educational therapist with children with learning disabilities at the Educational Institute for Learning and Research in New York.

ringl+pit, Pétrole Hahn [Shampoo Ad], 1931

From the 1980s, the work of ringl+pit and that of Auerbach and Stern was rediscovered as German museums started to look back. Auerbach's hometown Karlsruhe organized a show in 1988 called Emigriert. The Folkwang Museum in Essen mounted a comprehensive ringl+pit exhibition in 1993 and many others followed. For Ellen Auerbach the culmination was a retrospective of her work at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1998.  Ellen Auerbach died in New York on July 30, 2004, at the age of ninety-eight.