Richard Lindner

Richard Lindner - Master student of Max Körner; work as a commercial artist

Richard Lindner was born in Hamburg on 11th November 1901. Two women shaped the artist's childhood: his sister Lizzy, seven years his senior, who was a famous opera singer but died young, and his mother, an energetic woman who played a leading role in the family. The memory of his sister and mother later reappeared time and again in Richard Lindner's works. He briefly tried his hand at playing the piano and, like his father, worked as a salesman before attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Nuremberg from 1922 where he studied commercial art, oil painting and drawing for several years. In 1926, he became the master student of Professor Max Körner. During his time in Nuremberg, Lindner took part in several advertising design competitions, which he also won, and after moving to Berlin, subsequently worked as a commercial artist and advertising cartoonist, as well as designing stage sets. In Munich, he worked for the publishing house Knorr & Hirth and finally married his former Nuremberg fellow student Elsbeth Schülein in 1930. Until 1933, Lindner worked with some success as an illustrator for books and magazines and also designed full-colour posters.

Escape to New York; first successes as a painter

When the National Socialists came to power, the Jew and active social democrat Richard Lindner was moved to emigrate to Paris, where he befriended the journalist Joseph Bornstein. He struggled economically there, and his wife alone provided for the couple by working as a fashion illustrator. The Second World War led to temporary internment before Lindner managed to escape to New York, where he was able to establish himself as an advertising illustrator. After the divorce from his wife, who had entered into a new relationship with his friend Bornstein, Lindner applied for American citizenship. Although he worked successfully as a commercial artist until 1962, Lindner felt increasingly called to become a painter - by then the late developer was already 50 years old. His first success came with a portrait of Immanuel Kant, and in 1953 he created one of his most famous paintings, The Meeting, a surreal-looking gathering of nine figures, which was seen as an autobiographical and symbolic family portrait. One of the figures depicted is the painter Saul Steinberg, a friend of Lindner's.

Sharp contours and large-scale colours

Richard Lindner also painted women, quite excessively. The memory of his sister and mother played a role here, as did the suicide of his first wife Elsbeth, which affected him deeply despite the divorce. In contrast to many of his colleagues, Lindner never painted nudes, but always showed his women in artificially inflated staffage, de-individualised beyond recognition. Nevertheless, the depictions are erotic, almost exhibitionist, but it is precisely the tangible sexuality that inextricably separates the object from the viewer. With its sharp outlines and colourful surfaces, Richard Lindner's work became increasingly reminiscent of Pop Art, to which the artist himself never belonged.

Richard Lindner died in New York on 16th April 1978.