Salomé. Um 1918.
Lithograph in brown, colored.
Monogrammed in stone. On delicate Japon. 21 x 14,5 cm (8,2 x 5,7 in), the full sheet.
Different color variants of this lithography are in existence.

The oeuvre of Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler tells a shattering story of the artist’s life: Anna Frieda Wächtler, her birth name, knew from an early point on that she wanted to become an artist. As of 1919 she studied at the Dresden School of Fine Arts, where she was soon in touch with the circle of avant-garde artists around Conrad Felixmüller or Otto Griebel who were members of "Sezession Gruppe 1919". In order to make a living the artist made lithographs, among which the work offered in our auction also counts. It show the dancer Salomé, performing a seducing dance, holding a tray in her left hand and balancing the head of John the Baptist. The oriental, almost erotic scene is in strong contrast to the artist’s suffering soul. In 1929 she was committed to an asylum for the first time. In context of the euthanasia action "T4", the life of Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler came to a violent end in 1940. However, her artistic heritage is a striking document of a self confident woman broken by the National Socialists. [KP].