Portrait of Lotte Danziger

Manfred Hirzel painted in the Neue Sachlickheit (‘New Objectivity’) style popular in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s amongst artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and Otto Dix. The sobering movement developed after the First World War as a counterpoint to Expressionism. Its proponents upheld clarity of line, smooth painting surfaces, figuration rather than abstraction, and a focus on rationality. Portraits were particularly popular due to their ability for realism. Hirzel was born in Lodz, Poland and moved with his family to Berlin at a young age. He began studying painting at the Staatlichen Kunstschule in 1925 with Ludwig Meidner and Willy Jackel. He subsequently studied with Emil Orlik and first exhibited in 1928. In his obituary, Hirzel was called “the Holbein of our time” and most of the artist’s oeuvre is composed of portraits, alongside occasional urban scenes and female nudes. This portrait depicts "Lotte Danziger," who may possibly be Lotte Schenk-Danzinger (nee Charlotte “Lotte” Danziger, 1905-1992). Schenk-Danzinger studied psychology at the University of Vienna under Charlotte Bühler and Karl Bühler, receiving her doctorate in philosophy in 1930. She ultimately became a prominent child psychologist, publishing a number of scholarly articles over the course of her long lifetime. Hirzel passed away soon after completing the portrait, in 1932 at the young age of twenty-seven. The painting is monogrammed with the artist’s initials and dated at the lower right of the image.