1. Elsa Thiemann was a German photographer and former Bauhaus student.
11 Facts About Elsa Thiemann
1. 2.
Elsa Thiemann was born in Torun, West Prussia, which is part of Poland.
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Elsa Thiemann studied at the Bauhaus from 1929, receiving her Bauhaus Diploma in July 1931.
4.
Elsa Thiemann attended painting courses given by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
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Elsa Thiemann's work was composed of collaged dark photograms produced using plants, thread, and blobs of paint.
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From 1931 Elsa Thiemann worked in Berlin as a freelance photographer and a press photographer and, in order to do such work during the Nazi period, she joined the Reichskulturkammer in 1934, as all working artists had to do.
7.
Elsa Thiemann had anti-Nazi views and Hans Thiemann's surrealist art work was considered degenerate, so to keep a low profile she avoided taking photos that might seem to make political statements, instead photographing ordinary street scenes, particularly around Hertzbergstrasse in the Neukolln area where she lived, often taking photos directly from her apartment windows.
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Hans was associated with the Fantasten artists' group in Berlin, and Elsa Thiemann took many portraits of both Hans and the other members of the group.
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Elsa Thiemann is most well-known now for her street photography of Berlin before the war, and especially for her photographs of the ruins of Berlin after the war.
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Elsa Thiemann's works are held by the Museum Neukolln, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.
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Elsa Thiemann's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.