‘Faces – The Power of the Human Visage’

• Irene Bayer: Andor Weininger as Clown, 1926. Gelatin silver print. Museum Folkwang, Essen © Museum Folkwang, Essen
• Max Burchartz: Lotte (Eye), 1928. Gelatin silver print. Museum Folkwang, Essen
  © Bildrecht, Vienna 2020
• Oskar Nerlinger: Head with Torch, ca. 1928. Gelatin silver print. Galerie Berinson, Berlin
  © Sigrid Nerlinger
• Helmar Lerski: Metamorphosis through Light, 536, 1935-1936. Gelatin silver print
  © Estate of Helmar Lerski – Museum Folkwang, Essen

The Albertina Museum in Vienna dedicates an exhibition to iconic portraits from Germany’s interwar period. Open from February 12 to May 24, 2021.

In the 1920s and 30s, photographers effected a radical change in our conventional understanding of the classic portrait. Instead of aiming to capture the subject’s personality, they viewed the human face as a malleable artistic material in its own right.

Starting from Helmar Lerski’s series ‘Metamorphosis through Light’ (1935/36), the curators show how the human face was used to express both the aesthetic concepts of the avant-garde, and the social developments of the interwar period.

The exhibition features works by Gertrud Arndt, Irene Bayer, Aenne Biermann, Erwin Blumenfeld, Andreas  Feininger, Trude Fleischmann, Lotte Jacobi, Grit Kallin-Fischer, Edmund Kesting, Helmar Lerski, László  Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Oskar Nerlinger, Leni Riefenstahl, August Sander, Franz Xaver Setzer, Robert Siodmak, Anton Stankowski, Elfriede Stegemeyer, Edgar G. Ulmer, Umbo, and many others.

For further details visit Albertina