Anita Rée

Biography

Born into an old Jewish family of Hamburg merchants, she was the daughter of Israel Rée and Clara, née Hahn. Anita and her sister Emilie were however baptized and raised as Lutherans, in accordance with the social norms of assimilated upper middle class and upper class Jewish families in Germany at the time.

From 1905, she studied with the Hamburg painter Arthur Siebelist. In 1906, she met Max Liebermann, who recognized her talent and encouraged her to continue her artistic career. During the winter of 1912–1913, she studied with Fernand Léger in Paris.

From around 1914, Anita Rée gained recognition as a portrait painter.

She took her own life in 1933, partly as a result of having been subjected to hostility from various groups and harassment by antisemitic forces, partly due to disappointments on the personal level. In a note to her sister, she decried the insanity of the world. In 1937, the Nazis designated Rée's work as "degenerate art" and began purging it, as well as the work of many other artists, from museum collections. Wilhelm Werner, a groundskeeper at the Kunsthalle Hamburg preserved several of Rée's paintings by hiding them in his apartment.

Exhibitions

Literature