Irma Stern: A Modern Artist Between Berlin and Cape Town

In the art of the German-South African artist Irma Stern, motifs from her South African homeland meet the Expressionism of the Brücke artists.

After the First World War, Irma Stern (1894-1966) was a well-known figure in the Berlin art scene, where she was celebrated for her ＂exotic＂ paintings, until she was forced to leave Germany forever in 1933 due to Nazi persecution of the Jews. She later became a prominent artist in South Africa.

Her complex body of work was shaped both by emancipation and by cultural appropriation; while marginalized as a woman and threatened by antisemitism, she was also a beneficiary of South Africa’s apartheid regime. This richly illustrated volume focuses on Irma Stern’s highly expressive portraits and addresses questions regarding the contexts in which the works were created and how they are seen today.

Lisa Hörstmann wrote her doctorate on South African settler primitivism. She is a research assistant at the Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Moderne. Lisa Marei Schmidt is director of the Brücke Museum Berlin.