Mas­ter of Beau­ty: Karl Schenk­er’s Gla­m­orous Im­ages

About

In the 1910s and 20s Karl Schenk­er (1886–1954) was one of the best-known so­ci­e­ty por­trai­tists. Ac­tors, mod­els and the high so­ci­e­ty – ev­ery­one with dist­inc­tion had his or her por­trait tak­en in Schenk­er’s Ber­lin stu­dio on Kur­fürs­ten­damm, in New York or lat­er in Lon­don. As a pho­to­g­ra­pher, il­lus­tra­tor, pain­ter, and de­sign­er of man­ne­quins, Schenk­er de­vot­ed him­self above all to the gla­m­ourous fe­male por­trait and to fashion pho­to­graphs. For the first time now Schenk­er’s life and work are traced and thus an un­just­ly for­got­ten artist re­dis­cov­ered.