1903-1987
The photographic work of Annelise Kretschmer (1903-1987) spans a period of time over five decades, beginning in the middle of the 1920s. After attending the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where she studied drawing and bookbinding, she first worked voluntarily in the portrait studio of E. Kaenel in Essen (1922-1924), and then as master disciple of Franz Fiedler in Dresden (1924-1928).
Except for small series with images from trips to Paris and Hiddensee, Annelise Kretschmer concentrated on portraiture. She published her work regularly in publications like “Das Atelier” and, towards the end of the 1920s she opened in Dortmund her own portrait studio. In 1920 she participated in the legendary traveling exhibition “Film und Foto,” and in 1930 the exhibition “Das Lichtbild.” In 1928 she married the sculptor Sigmund Kretschmer. Through him her experience of contemporary art was deepened.
The early photographs of Annelise Kretschmer are to be seen in the context of “New Photography,” where she experimented with cropping and form, whereby in the sphere of portraiture it is always the personality of the subject, which is central. Two themes define the portrait photography of Annelise Kretschmer: images of her children in the 1930s, and the culturally active people and citizens from the area of her hometown Dortmund until the 1960s. The portraits of her children as well as her professional studio portraits are characterized by a great psychological intensity, which Annelise Kretschmer created through a concentration on mimic and gesture of the subject. At the same time, the environment is often diffused through strict cropping, the use of light and shadow and the clever choice of background, which appears in part almost painterly.
In 1943 the Kretschmer family moved to the region of Breisgau. In 1950 Anneliese Kretschmer reopened her studio, which had been destroyed in the war. In 1953 Sigmund Kretschmer died and from 1958 the artist worked together with her youngest daughter Christiane von Konigslow. Again, the “psychological portrait” formed the basis of her work, whereby her photographic style appears cooler and more objective. From the late 1950s it is mainly artists, like the sculptor Ewald matare or the photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, who were photographed by Annelise Kretschmer.
