Kasia von Szadurska
Female painter
„It is
easier to think yourself in a bohemian attic than in the villa of a
distinguished husband at the Lake of Constance.“
Why did I choose this woman? For her time she was a
very independent woman and an unusual painter who lived a life far from all
convention, who however, because of her personal destiny as wife of a
distinguished husband, stayed rather unknown as a painter.
Short
introduction
Kasia von Szadurska
was inquisitive, she loved experiments and was full of life. The feeling
of confining situation at lake Constance made her again break out, searching
for a way of her own, free of conventions. Her way led her finally to Berlin,
where she died lonely, poor and sick.
Her career
as an artist
"Sinister figures, lascivious women and honest
citizens."
In the style of Expressionism and New Objectivism
(Neue Sachlichkeit).
At the Lake of Constance the artist is known as „ the lady
of a large city“.
She belonged to an expressionist group of painters at
the Lake of Constance.
Besides portrait paintings in oil and aquarelle technique and also landscape paintings
her special talent is shown in graphics, also in the form of book illustrations
in expressionistic style.
In 1920 she changed her style to the Neue Sachlichkeit
with themes like masks, cats, acts and especially portraits.
After her divorce, dependent on her own earnings, she
mostly painted contracted portraits.
Large bouquets of flowers completed her later work.
Curriculum
vitae
Kasia von Szadurska was born 23.2.1886 in Moscow as illegitimate daughter
of a Lithuanian – Polish nobleman and a woman from Breslau.
Aged four, she came as an adoptive daughter to
Dresden.
After 1903 she got private instruction in painting in
Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden und Berlin.
In her time in Munich she made the acquaintance of a
lawyer from the Lake of Constance, whom she married in 1910 and followed him to
the Lake of Constance. He lived in Meersburg, she in Constance, which made a
political scandal.
The marriage was divorced for unknown reasons, it is supposed
that Kasia von Szadurska wished to return to Munich which did not come true.
Other reasons could be the conventional behaviour of her husband and her need
of emancipation.
She was found legally guilty as she admitted a liaison
with a painter from Constance. This meant that she was not allowed to see her
two sons.
As a single woman she was dependent on commissions and
oriented her painting on the wishes of her customers.
At the end of 1939 she changed her place of residence
from Bodensee to Berlin. There her health got rapidly worse. Alone, poor and
almost not known, she died in 1942 in a Berlin hospital.
The divorced husband recommended, also on behalf of her
sons, not to take on her inheritance: „The possible advantage is for the sons
so small in comparison to the risk that could burden them their whole
life".
The town of Meersburg purchases only in 1984 a large
collection of paintings, drawings, aquarelles and graphics from the ownership
of her niece.
Author: Mona
Willmann, June 2013
Literature
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasia_von_Szadurska 26.1.2013
- Katalog:“Kasia von Szadurska. 1886-1942. Leidenschaft und Leid“ in der Städtischen Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz
- Foto in einer Ausstellung im Neuen Schloss zu Meersburg, Author: Julius Staudt, License: PD, Quelle: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kasia_von_Szadurska_1010977.jpg
