Richard Lindner

Richard Lindner (Hamburg, 1901 – New York, 1978) was a German-American painter, known for his bizarrely erotic portraits that combine human figures with machine-like elements. In 1941, he moved from Paris to New York, where he worked as an illustrator for numerous publications, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Fortune. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid and elsewhere.

Richard Lindner’s fragmented and discursive artistic expression was shaped by the traumatic experience of escaping from Germany in 1933. Lindner’s work is based on a distanced view of the metropolis of New York. Artistic activity allowed him to face the wounds and concerns characteristic of the emigrant experience.

His interest in Cubism led him to break the body into its component parts and put it back together like a puzzle. He expressed his reflections on metropolitan life in a cool and measured visual language typical of the New Objectivity of the 1920s, which he combined with the bright and shiny planes of colour characteristic of American advertising art.

The Hamburg-born artist transformed the spectacle of modern urban life into scenes of existential alienation and inner emptiness. His characters, associated with the icons of New York, create an image of a threatening and anonymous metropolis. In these works, they remain cold and inaccessible, not allowing themselves to be exposed and consumed by the public exposure to which their era was prone. Their exterior, shaped by stereotypical postures and conventional clothing, acts like a cocoon behind which their true personality is only hinted at. Here, the superficiality of pop culture turns into a mask.