Twenty-seven years after Agnews staged Lotte Laserstein’s last exhibition before her death, the gallery is once again mounting a vibrant display of the artist’s work. What’s the angle of the new show?
The first exhibition in London dedicated solely to Lotte Laserstein since the ground-breaking 1987 exhibition at Agnews will open at the same location on November 8. On view through December 15, “Lotte Laserstein’s Women” is a focus exhibition at Agnews that seeks to “acknowledge and reinstate Laserstein as one of the great women artists in the canon of 20th-century art from which she and many other women artists of the inter-war period have been excluded,” according to the gallery.
Agnews continued, “The exhibition is comprised both of works for sale and on loan; some of the works have rarely been seen in public and others have not previously been exhibited. Many of the loaned works are from private collections except for one, her ‘Self-portrait at the easel’ (1938), which has been loaned by the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin.”
“Lotte Laserstein is so important because the 20th century, like no other period before it, produced an extraordinary number and diversity of women artists who, despite their obvious and varied talents, were marginalized and their work underappreciated,” added Anthony Crichton-Stuart, director of Agnews. “Despite the fact that they greatly enriched our cultural history, the roles of these women artists in both the commercial and academic worlds has never been fully recognized. Thus, Laserstein’s work, like many other women painters, architects, sculptors, and photographers, particularly from the inter-war years, is only now getting the attention it so justly deserves. Thanks to incredibly generous loans from Sweden, Belgium, Britain, Germany, and the U.S.A., this exhibition reveals a powerful body of work by a woman painter whose destiny and creative output were particularly influenced but also nearly destroyed by the major political, social, and cultural crises and upheavals of the first half of the 20th century.”
To learn more, visit Agnews.
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