Evening Conversation, 1948

Lotte Laserstein

Narrator: This work was created three years after the end of the war. In contrast to many of Lotte Laserstein’s works from this time, this is not a commissioned piece. The painting communicates an atmosphere of uncertainty. In a dark, tight space without visible win dows or wider views, five people are in conversation. All look attentively at the man to the left in the picture, and seem to thoughtfully listen to him. The light that falls in from the right prompts dramatic light and shadow formations over the wall as w ell as over the participants, underscoring the seriousness of the gathering.

We know today who the people in the picture are, with the exception of the man who is standing. All were refugees from Nazi Germany; to the left sit the Sedermanns, to the right, the sculptor Walther Beyer with his wife Marianne. Muted tones in blue, gray, and brown underscore the gravity of the situation. The paint, applied here and there in a manner reminiscent of the brushwork in the painting “The Emigrant”, makes the figures slightly blurry and causes them to appear as representatives of people in an uncertain life situation rather than as portraits of individuals. Here, Lotte Laserstein thematizes the question that many emigrants were faced with at the end of the Second World W ar. Should they remain, return, or move on? The observer is drawn into the circle of friends and finds themselves between Marianne Beyer on the right and Mr. Sedermann on the left.