Lot 320 Dα

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler was born in Dresden in 1899 and began her artistic training in 1915 at the school of applied arts, simultaneously receiving instruction in drawing and painting from Otto Gussmann at Dresden's academy of fine art until 1921. In the Saxon art metropolis she was friends with the initiators of the “Dresdner Sezessions-Gruppe 1919”, who included Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller and Otto Griebel. Between 1927 and 1931, a period filled with many private misfortunes, Lohse-Wächtler created her most important works in Hamburg. In addition to landscapes, her numerous oil paintings, watercolours and drawings primarily depict highly expressive portraits from her personal milieu. In 1937 her works, which are related to expressive realism, were denigrated as degenerate and some of them were destroyed. After becoming severely mentally ill, Lohse-Wächtler was murdered in 1940 in the context of the Nazi's euthanasia programme. Today she is seen as a painter of Germany's “lost generation”.