Herbert List was actually intended for a career as a coffee importer
Herbert List was born in Hamburg on 7 October 1903. The son of Leipzig-born coffee importer Felix List (1868-1931) and his wife Luise Weiße (1880-1954), he was intended to succeed his father in the family business and was thus sent at the age of 18 as apprentice to a colleague in the industry in Heidelberg. At the same time, the nephew of publisher Paul List (1869-1929) also attended lectures in literature and art history. In 1925, Herbert List joined his father's company List & Heineken in Hamburg and undertook several business trips to Latin America, where he inspected and photographed coffee plantations, and also recorded his visits to Mexico and California with his camera. He socialised with artists such as the siblings Erika Mann (1905-1969) and Klaus Mann (1906-1949), Eduard Bargheer (1901-1979) and Stephen Spender (1909-1995), and felt increasingly drawn to art.
Friendship with Andreas Feininger; emigration to Paris
Herbert List began to seriously pursue photography as an art and profession at the suggestion of the German-American photographer and Bauhaus student Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) - with whom he had a personal friendship - and after studying the works of Giorgio di Chirico (1888-1978), René Magritte (1898-1967) and Man Ray (1890-1976). With Andreas Feininger at his side, Herbert List roamed the streets of the city and experimented with the SLR camera, which had just come onto the market at that time. After the death of his father, he briefly took over the management of the company in 1931, but passed it on to his younger brother just four years later and emigrated to Paris to avoid the threat of arrest by the Gestapo, where he had made himself unpopular due to his partly Jewish ancestry, his homosexuality, and his critical stance of the Nazi state.
Fashion photographer and picture reporter for the occupying powers
In his early independent work, Herbet List displayed clear influences from New Objectivity and Bauhaus, and was later increasingly inspired by French Surrealism. After his first exhibition in Paris, he worked in London as a fashion photographer on the advice of his friends George Hoyningen-Huene (1900-1968) and Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), paying his way with publications in magazines such as Vogue, Life, Harper’s Bazaar and Verve and to gather experience in studio photography. However, this work did not satisfy him artistically and so he started afresh in Athens where his great book project Licht über Hellas took shape. The invasion of Greece by the Italian and German troops forced the artist to return to Germany where he was drafted into the army. After the war, he photographed the ruined cities, worked as cultural editor for Heute, the magazine published by the occupying forces, and undertook numerous trips through Greece, Spain, Italy, France and the Caribbean.
International exhibition success and awards
Herbert List took part in numerous international exhibitions in, amongst others, Zurich, Munich, London, Milan and New York, and worked with Robert Capa (1913-1954) and his photo agency Magnum. Herbert List received prizes and awards for his photographic work, including the David Octavius Hill Medal in 1964 from the German Photographic Academy, whilst his friend Stephen Spender honoured him with a literary memorial in the figure of Joachim in his novel The Temple.
Herbert List died in Munich on 4 April 1975.
Herbert List - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
