Berlin 30-06-2010
The photographer Marianne Breslauer was born in Berlin in 1909 and took lessons in photography in Berlin from 1927 to 1929, where she became an admirer of the then well-known portrait photographer Frieda Riess and of the Hungarian André Kertész.
While she always saw herself more as a photographic reporter than anything else in 1929 she travelled to Paris, where she became a pupil of the contemporary artist ‘Man Ray’.
In 1930 she started work for the Ullstein publishing house, where and up until 1934 her photos were published in many leading German magazines of the times like; the Frankfurter Illustrierten, Der Querschnitt, Die Dame, Zürcher Illustrierten and Das Magazin.
The rise of Nazism in Germany, and the concomitant anti-Semitic practices then coming into play all over Germany meant that her employers needed her to publish her photos under a pseudonym, to hide the fact that she was Jewish – this she rightfully refused to do so.
In 1936 she immigrated to the Netherlands and in Amsterdam married the modern-art dealer Walter Feilchenfeld, who had also previously left Germany after seeing Nazis break up an auction of modern art.
In 1939 the family fled to Switzerland and in Zurich where the couple eventually set up an art business specializing in French paintings and 19th-century art.
Her husband died in 1953 and then she herself took over the business, along with her son Walter -she died in Zollikon, near Zurich in February 2001.
Present exhibit at the BERLIN’S MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE combines the monographic display of the work of Marianne Breslauer with a 2nd section drawn from its own collection.
This consists of about 60 works by ten female colleagues, among them Yva, Steffi Brandl, Lotte Jacobi and Marta Astfalck-Vietz.
Along with these women, some famous and others familiar only to proffessional photographers, who are better placed to understand the particular quality of Marianne Breslauer’s photography, but also parallels in the work of these other artists that are rooted in their specific historical period.
In addition, this provides another opportunity to illustrate the significant role these women played in the photography of the modern age.
For more information in both English and German -
http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/
Tags: Marianne Breslauer
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