Christian Schad portrays 1920s Berlin

 

There are images that are all the time used to illustrate the Berlin of the 1920s, the Weimar Republic. It may be Marlene Dietrich showing off her beautiful legs in The Blue Angel, or a watercolor by George Grosz, or an oil painting by Otto Dix. But it is often Christian Schad who is chosen, especially his portrait of Count St-Genois d'Anneaucourt, with two female figures, one of which seems to represent more of a transvestite than a woman. What better illustration of this time, which for some evokes decadence, debauchery.

Christian Schad (1894-1982) passed through Cubist, Futurist and Expressionist periods. He also experimented with Dadaism in 1917, when he lived in Geneva, one of Dada’s centers, where he fled to avoid being draft in the German army. Dada will be for him a transition to the New Objectivity, a German offshoot of the artistic "back to basics” movement that is observed in several countries after the war. With the particularity in his case of refering a lot to the old masters. We observe this not only in his technique but also in his predilection for portraiture, an eminently classic genre that nevertheless allows him to give an often critical view of society.

Christian Schad is also a great draughtsman, and produced prints that reflected the city life. In 1930, he illustrated the Guide to the Berlin Debauchery of CurtMorek.

He is the great portraitist of the New Objectivity. He paints the portraits of his contemporaries, in a style that is faithful to the tradition of the old masters. The result will be a work that gives an incisive and icy vision of reality, where solitude reigns, embodied by models chosen from the actors of the decadent life of the time.

 

 

1926

1926