Vintage matte gelatin silver print on carte postale
5.12 x 3.37 inches (13,0 x 8,5 cm)
Blindstamp lower left - Trude Fleischmann Wien 1. Ebendorferstr.3
Signed in pencil lower left margin
FINE

Literature: Trude Fleischmann: Fotografien 1918-1938, Galerie Faber, Wien, 1988, for a similar example

Trude FLEISCHMANN (1895-1990)
In addition to her intimate studies of dancers and nudes, Trude Fleischmann - through her personal ties to Vienna’s cultural elite - was able to take introspective portraits of such personalities as Alban Berg, Adolf Loos, Grete Wiesenthal, Arturo Toscanini, Oskar Kokoscha, and Max Reinhardt. Her impeccable technical skills allowed her to control the more sculptural aspects of her subjects, whom she posed against neutral backgrounds.

Born into a bourgeois Jewish family, Fleishmann briefly studied art in Paris before training in photography at the Graphische-Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna from 1913 to 1916, when Rudolf Koppitz and Josef Trcka were also enrolled. Fleischmann briefly apprenticed with Dora Kallmus before completing her practical training in Hermann Schieberth’s portrait studio in 1919, when she joined the Photographische Gesellschaft in Wein (Vienna Photographic Society). In 1920 she opened her own studio where she worked with glass plates and artificial light to create elegant diffuse effects. Fleischmann’s outdoor photography on the other hand, exploits strong contrasts of sunlight and shade. Her work appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines.

When Austria was annexed by the Nazis in 1938 Fleischmann left for Paris and then London, taking only forty-one negatives and a portfolio with her. She was able to immigrate to the United States. In 1940 Fleischmann opened a studio in New York on West 56th Street, where she attracted many new émigré clients, and photographed old ones, such as Kokoschka and Toscanini, anew. She also did celebrity and fashion photography for magazines such as Vogue and formed a close friendship with photographer Lisette Model.

In 1969 she retired to Lugano, Switzerland, but following a serious accident in 1987 she returned to the care of her family in Brewster, New York, where she died at age ninety-four. – From “Portraits of an Age," Neue Galerie, New York