Lottie Reizenstein was born into a Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany in 1904, where she trained at the local Kunstgewerbeschule and then at the Reimann School in Berlin. Following the rise of Nazism, she fled Germany, settling in England in 1936, studying at London's St. Martins School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, before finally training under Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg in the 1950s. She exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions in exile.
Painter, designer and teacher, Lottie (née Charlotte Franziska) Reizenstein was born into a Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany, on 9 April 1904, one of three children. Although her father, a physician, was also an avid painter and collector, her parents were initially reluctant to allow her to pursue painting as a career. Consequently, she trained initially as a teacher (1923–29), studying part time at the Nuremberg Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts and Crafts). In 1931 she moved to Berlin, where for the next two years she attended the progressive, Jewish-owned Reimannschule (founded in 1902 by the sculptor Albert Reimann).
In 1934 Reizenstein's younger brother, composer Franz Reizenstein (1911–1968), immigrated to England and studied at the Royal College of Music in London. Two years later she obtained a visa and also moved to London, beginning her own studies at St Martin’s School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Soon after her arrival, in 1937, she sought employment as a toy designer for the East London Toy Factory Ltd., subject to having the correct permit. In 1939, her mother also joined the siblings. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Reizenstein worked in a factory and as a freelance artist, applying to various companies, including Southern Electricity Board for a position as a window dresser. In 1945 she took a teacher’s course at Loughborough College of Arts and Crafts. She was registered as an Alien in London in 1946 and was naturalised in 1948. She continued her design trajectory, producing patterns for fashion, textiles and paper goods, She also exhibited regularly in London galleries from the mid-1940s, including with the Women's International Art Club (1946) and with Ben Uri, where she participated in group exhibitions, including with the Studio Group in 1952, alongside fellow émigrés Klaus Meyer, Bruno Simon and Erich Kahn. In 1953, she began teaching art alongside her own artistic practice, and completed her training under Oskar Kokoschka at the Salzburg Summer Academy in 1954 and at the Royal Drawing Society in London in 1956.
Throughout her career, Reizenstein travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and southern Europe, becoming known in London’s artistic circles for her landscapes in oils, watercolours, and gouache. Work created on her travels became the focus of many of her later studio exhibitions as well as her solo exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery in 1959, where she displayed a series of seaside landscapes painted during a visit to the Adriatic coast. Her studio exhibition in 1972 featured sketches and paintings of mountains and coastal scenes as well as flower pieces. Reizenstein worked as an art tutor for London County Council (LCC) and Middlesex County Council (MCC) until 1961, when she transferred to the Marylebone Institute, where she taught until 1974. At the same time, she began teaching art privately in her own studio in College Crescent, Hampstead.
Lottie Reizenstein died in the Royal Free Hospital in London, England on 1 February 1982, aged 78. Her last solo exhibition took place in 1976 at Hampstead's Margaret Fisher Gallery. After her death, a memorial exhibition (with work by émigrés Jack Bilbo and Henry Sanders) was held at Ben Uri Gallery in 1983, with a further exhibition featuring Iris Blain in 1987. In 1986, Reizenstein’s work was represented in the important survey exhibition Art in Exile: Great Britain 1933-1945, presented at the Camden Arts Centre, which toured from Germany in a reconfigured format. Her work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the British Museum, London and one of her landscapes is on permanent display in the Franz Reizenstein Room at the Royal Academy of Music.
Lottie Reizenstein in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lottie Reizenstein]
Publications related to [Lottie Reizenstein] in the Ben Uri Library