Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955)

"Portrait of Karola Neher" 1929
This is one of my favorite portrait paintings ever...

The colors and outfit of this woman are so fantastic, it seems to me I may have met this woman today, somewhere, maybe at a flea market? Karola, was her name, and she stood out from the others, in her time, I am guessing.

Karola Neher was a well-known actress in Germany during the inter-war period and played Polly Peachum in the 1931 film adaptation of the theatrical hit The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht. Neher was also Brecht’s mistress for a time. A Communist sympathiser, Neher fled to Moscow with her second husband Anatol Becker in 1934. There they became victims of the Stalinist purges, Becker being executed by firing squad in 1937 while Neher was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp. She died of typhoid in a camp in 1942 aged 41.

This magnificent portrait was presumed lost until 2007.

"Margot"

"Speedy Half Nude"

Drunkards


Rudolph Schlichter was a German artist closely associated with the New 
Objectivity movement. The Nazis deemed his depictions of the realities 
of social life in Berlin degenerate and his studio was destroyed.
 His work became surrealist after the war.