Queer Places:
Niebuhrstraße 78, 10629 Berlin, Germany
Lene Schneider-Kainer, born Lene Schneider (1885 - 1971), was
a Jewish-Austrian painter, daughter of the painter
Sigmund Schneider,[1]
noted for her illustration of "Lukian: Hetärengespräche.
Mit Illustrationen von Lene Schneider-Kainer und einem Nachwort von Sabine
Dahmen". The exhibition Lesbian Visions at the Schwules Museum from May
10 to August 20, 2018, brought into view artistic positions by queer FLT*
(females, lesbians, trans) from over 100 years and displays works by more than
30 artists across six generations, including Lene Schneider-Kainer.
Porträt von Else Lasker-Schüler malte Lene Schneider-Kainer
Lene Schneider-Kainer started her art studies in Vienna, and continued in Munich, Paris and
Amsterdam. During a stay in Paris she met
her future husband,
Ludwig Kainer, a doctor, painter, graphic designer, poster artist and
stage designer from Munich, whom she married in 1910. From about 1911 the
couple belonged to a circle of artists and intellectuals that included
Arnold Schönberg,
Franz Werfel,
Herwarth Walden and his wife,
Else Lasker-Schüler. Between 1912 and 1926 she lived in Berlin at 78
Niebuhrstraße in
Charlottenburg. In 1914/15 Schneider-Kainer produced a strong and
expressive oil painting of the poet and playwright Else Lasker-Schüler.
Schneider-Kainer made her debut as an artist in 1917 with an exhibition of
some 50 oil paintings and drawings at the Galerie Gurlitt, shocking the
art world of Berlin. There was an uproar over 30 erotic images, illustrating
Wieland's 1788 German translation of the "Dialogues of the Courtesans (Hetaerae)"
by Lucian.
The artistic highpoint of Schneider-Kainer's career was in the years from
1919 to 1922 with the production of lithographic erotic portfolios with titles
such as "Ten female acts" and "Before the Mirror." In the 1920s
Schneider-Kainer became renowned as painter and illustrator, enjoying great
acclaim in Berlin and selling her works abroad.
Known for her paintings of erotic female nudes, in 1926, Schneider-Kainer left Berlin after her divorce and for two years
accompanied the poet
Bernhard Kellermann on an extended odyssey, often by donkey or caravan,
visiting Russia,
Persia, India,
Burma,
Thailand,
Vietnam, Tibet,
Hongkong and
China. In her memoirs, she wrote:
We travelled through many countries and regions, which had never seen a
camera, where the inhabitants either fled from the camera or became
nuisances through their insatiable curiosity.... they found it astounding
that a woman could draw and write.
She painted, photographed and sketched her impressions, and these
contributions appeared regularly in the
Berliner Tageblatt. On her return via the
Trans-Siberian Railway, she presented a selection of her works from Asia
in Berlin,
Magdeburg,
Stuttgart,
Kiel,
London and
Rome, and
produced illustrations for the magazine, "Die Dame". She did not return
to Germany after a 1932 trip to the
Balearic Islands because of the power takeover by the
National Socialists. After this she settled on
Mallorca,
and later on Ibiza,
where she started an artists' colony. With the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War, she left for New York. Under a pseudonym she published
washable fabric children's books.[2]
She had successful exhibitions in
Mallorca,
Barcelona,
Copenhagen,
New York City and
Philadelphia. In 1954 she settled in Bolivia, where she assisted her son
in establishing a textile factory producing
Native American designs for export to the
United States.[3]
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lene_Schneider-Kainer