Lene Schneider-Kainer, born Lene Schneider (1885 – 1971), was a Jewish-Austrian painter, daughter of the painter Sigmund Schneider, noted for her illustration of "'' Lukian:Hetärengespräche. Mit Illustrationen von Lene Schneider-Kainer und einem Nachwort von Sabine Dahmen''".

Life and art

She started her art studies in Vienna, and continued in Munich, Paris and Amsterdam. During a stay in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

she met her future husband,

Ludwig Kainer Ludwig Kainer (28 June 1885 – 25 April 1967) was a German graphic artist, draftsman, painter, illustrator, film architect and costume designer. Early life Kainer was born in Munich. He studied medicine before turning to art. During a sta ...

, 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 Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and Poetry, poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''Th ...

, Herwarth Walden and his wife,

Else Lasker-Schüler Else Lasker-Schüler (née Elisabeth Schüler) (; 11 February 1869 – 22 January 1945) was a German-Jewish poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and her poetry. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressi ...

. 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 Lucian of Samosata, '; la, Lucianus Samosatensis ( 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore ...

. 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. In 1926, Schneider-Kainer left Berlin after her divorce and for two years accompanied the poet

Bernhard Kellermann Bernhard Kellermann (4 March 1879, Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria – 17 October 1951) was a German author and poet. Life Bernhard Kellermann enrolled in 1899 at Technical University Munich initially in general studies, but later focused on G ...

on an extended odyssey, often by donkey or caravan, visiting

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Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

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, Hongkong and

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. In her memoirs, she wrote: She painted, photographed and sketched her impressions, and these contributions appeared regularly in the '' Berliner Tageblatt''. On her return via the

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, she presented a selection of her works from Asia in

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and

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, and produced illustrations for the magazine, ''"Die Dame"''. She did not return to Germany after a 1932 trip to the

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because of the power takeover by the National Socialists. After this she settled on

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, and later on

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, where she started an artists' colony. With the outbreak of the

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, she left for New York. Under a pseudonym she published washable fabric children's books. She had successful exhibitions in

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and

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. 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 The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

.Women who moved Berlin

Bibliography

* Dahmen, Sabine: ''Leben und Werk der jüdischen Künstlerin Lene Schneider-Kainer im Berlin der 20er Jahre''. Dortmund: Ed. Ebersbach, 1999

References

External links

*
Guide to the Lene Schneider-Kainer Collection
at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. {{DEFAULTSORT:Schneider-Kainer, Lene 1885 births 1971 deaths 20th-century Austrian painters 20th-century Austrian women artists Austrian illustrators Jewish women painters Jewish painters Austrian Jews Bolivian Jews Austrian expatriates in Germany Austrian emigrants to Bolivia Artists from Vienna Bolivian people of Austrian-Jewish descent Austrian women painters Austrian women illustrators