Born: 1906 Berlin, German Empire
Died: 1997 Aberdare, Wales
Year of Migration to the UK: 1938
Biography
Painter Barbara Leupold was born on 16 October 1906 in Berlin, German Empire (now Germany), to Gertrude Leupold (née Igel) and Anton Wilhelm Leupold. Her father was a respected choirmaster and organist in one of the city’s major churches, while her mother, who was Jewish, had trained as an opera singer. The family lived on Luitpoldstrasse, in a middle-class Berlin neighbourhood, and Leupold grew up with her younger brother Ulrich, who would later emigrate to Canada during the 1930s. Despite the increasing threat of anti-Semitic persecution following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Leupold and her family remained relatively protected during the early years of Nazi rule, due to her father’s non-Jewish background.
Leupold began painting in Berlin in the early 1920s, a period marked by vibrant avant-garde activity, despite growing political repression. Photographs from the time show her working in the studios of academy artists and posing confidently within groups of fellow practitioners at different social events. As a young woman in the 1920s, she came under the influence of Hungarian émigré painter Robert Bereny, who lodged with her family and whose presence seems to have left a lasting mark on her artistic development. While almost all of Leupold’s early work is now lost, likely looted or destroyed during the war, one self-portrait painted in 1932, when she was 26, has survived. Executed in oil on board and recently rediscovered and attributed by her family, this painting stands as a rare and significant remnant of her lost pre-exile creative output. Marked by realist clarity that aligns with Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a style prominent in Weimar Germany, the portrait exemplifies a strong female artistic agency. With her direct gaze, practical clothing, and assertive pose, the artist embodies the independent and professionally self-assured New Woman. It also recalls the style of Lotte Laserstein in its resistance to idealisation and, instead, offers a grounded, psychologically charged reflection of modern womanhood. Leupold’s photograph album from the pre-exile years show a skilled artist, who at times combined the academic tradition with a more contemporary expressionism.
Following the death of her father in 1940, and facing the increasing risk of Nazi persecution, Leupold’s family dispersed. Her brother emigrated to the US, while her mother, forced to flee their Berlin apartment to evade the Gestapo, returned after the war to find it ransacked. Leupold herself had already left Germany two years earlier, in 1938, journeying first to Paris, where she stayed briefly with a Jewish photographer friend who had also fled Berlin. From there she travelled to England, aided by family connections. In London, she was welcomed by a second cousin, Vally Lasker, and it was through this émigré network that she met her future husband, Norman, who, like her, was of German Jewish descent. A friend from Paris later reflected on this journey saying: ‘You were really brave. Above all, to make that huge decision to leave your homeland, alone - completely alone. It must have taken great courage!’ (from Philip Oliver’s private archive). It was many years before Leupold resumed painting, having largely set aside her artistic practice during the upheaval of war and resettlement.
Eventually, Leupold returned to her artwork, joining art classes at Camden Arts Centre on Arkwright Road in West Hampstead, an area with a long tradition of hosting refugee artists. Her work from this period shows a sensitivity to observation and naturalistic detail, as evident in thelocal landscape, Golders Hill (1985), where dense foliage partially veils a sunlit house in a photograph-like composition. In contrast, Girl in the Red Hat (submitted to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1988) shows a more introspective and atmospheric mood, conveyed through her contemplative pose and the expressive handling of light and colour. Another portrait was executed in a loose and expressive realist style, using vivid colour contrasts and fluid brushwork to convey the sitter’s poised and introspective presence, set against a stylised, curtain-like backdrop. Though modest in number, the paintings from the later UK period reflect a continued commitment to art and a rekindling of the creative path that had been interrupted by exile.
Barbara Leupold died in Aberdare, South Wales on 10 August 1997. While there is limited information about Leupold’s artistic training and career prior to exile, her photographs and surviving works reveal a vibrant and successful career that was cut short, and show her skill as a painter trained in the German tradition. The only available information on Leupold comes from her son, Philip Oliver, along with a small collection of paintings, a modest archive, and the compelling photograph album.
Related organisations
- Camden Art Centre (student )
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Barbara Leupold]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Barbara Leupold] in the Ben Uri Library