Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler

The Franz Marc Museum is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to the artist Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (1899-1940) that sheds light on her unique oeuvre and eventful life story.
With around 80 paintings and drawings from public and private collections, the show offers a multifaceted overview of all phases of the artist's work, whose unmistakable visual language delves deep into the themes of identity, marginalisation and self-empowerment.

Lohse-Wächtler is regarded as one of the most important female voices in New Objectivity art, whose work is characterised by empathy and dynamism. In her barely two decades of creative work, she developed an independent and empathetic visual language that vividly explores themes such as suffering, lust, threat and loneliness.

The exhibition shows atmospherically dense scenes from the world of Hamburg brothels and pubs, unconventional portraits of types and impressive self-portraits. Her works from the Hamburg years (1925-1931) in particular reflect the precarious living conditions and artistic intensity of this phase. Here she created powerful works in which she confidently penetrated traditionally male-dominated spaces such as the harbour or St. Pauli.

Lohse-Wächtler left her parental home at the age of 16 and was active in the Dresden avant-garde from 1918 under the pseudonym "Nikolaus Wächtler". Her friends included prominent artists such as Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller and Otto Griebel. The Hamburg years marked an artistic heyday, but were also characterised by personal crises, which led to her first stay in hospital in 1929. Her powerful works were often created in the face of existential threats - a story of self-empowerment that ended tragically in 1940 with her murder as part of the National Socialist murder of the sick ("Aktion T4").

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Last edited on 07.05.2026