’Sweet Kitsch, I can't do that.’ Maria Luiko (1904-1941)

Please join the Fritz Ascher Society for “’Sweet Kitsch, I can't do that.’ Maria Luiko (1904-1941),” a talk by Wolfram P. Kastner, curator and artist, and Mascha Erbelding, director of the Puppet Theatre / Fairground Attractions Collection at Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich City Museum).

Register here.

Maria Luiko (1904-1941), born Marie Luise Kohn in Munich, is characterized by an impressive diversity. In addition to drawings, watercolors and oil paintings, she created prints using various printing processes and paper cuts, and designed book illustrations, stage sets and marionettes. Already during her studies at the local Academy of Fine Arts and her training at the School of Applied Arts she was included in exhibitions in the Munich Glass Palace (Münchner Glaspalast).
Her career was brutally cut short by the Nazi regime. As a Jew, Luiko was not able to join the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Künste), a Nazi organization founded in 1933. Without membership, she could not obtain work materials, exhibit or sell her artwork. The Cultural Association of German Jews (Kulturbund Deutscher Juden) was founded to give Jews access to cultural life and to provide Jewish artists who had become unemployed with a livelihood. Until 1939 Luiko contributed to them and to the Marionette Theater of Munich Jewish Artists. A large part of her graphic work, in which she critically deals with the current living conditions and everyday situations, were created during this time. On November 20, 1941 Maria Luiko was deported to Kaunas in Lithuania together with her sister Dr. Elisabeth Kohn, her mother Olga Kohn (nee Schulhöfer) and 996 other Jews and murdered there.

The event is part of the monthly series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression," which is organized by The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, New York.