Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a German artist. She represented the dada movement and avant-garde in such fields as poetry, painting, sculpture, performance and assemblage. The artist was also known for her excentric and somehow scandalous behavior both in life and art.
Background
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was born as Elsa Plötz on July 12, 1874, in a city of Swinemünde, Province of Pomerania, German Empire (currently Świnoujście in Poland). She was a daughter of Adolf Plötz, a contractor, and Ida Marie Kleist.
Elsa had difficult relationships with her father because of his rough control over the family. She loved more her mother who was according to Elsa a kind-hearted person.
Elsa had two younger sisters, one of whom was named Charlotte Louise.
Freytag-Loringhoven’s mother died in February of 1893. Soon, the relationships between Elsa and her father worsened. After her father’s remarriage, von Freytag-Loringhoven left her family home and fled to Berlin to her aunt.
Education
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven received the training in the acting profession. She studied art at the colony of artists in German town Dachau, not far from Munich.
Career
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven started to work after she moved to Berlin in 1893. To support herself, she collected different jobs such as an actress, a vaudeville performer, a chorus girl at Berlin's Central Theatre and even a waitress. She also was a life model for many artists of the time, including the erotic series by Henry De Vry called "Living Pictures".
In 1909, having a bad knowledge of English, Elsa travelled to the United States where she pursued her modelling activity, working in particular with such photographers as George Biddle and Charles Sheeler in Philadelphia as well as posing for the artists Louis Bouché, Man Ray, George Grantham Bain and Theresa Bernstein. Finally, Elsa settled down in New York City where she had worked for some time at the Greenwich Village.
Elsa was not a usual model – the artist covered her body with various objects she had collected in the street like spoons, cans or postage stamps. It was a real performance for the audience. Later, by 1913, von Freytag-Loringhoven began to use this stuff as the material for her so-called sculptures, collages and assemblages, which she often accompanied by religious titles with a particular meaning. Among the examples of such compositions were Enduring Ornament, Cathedral and God.
It was this time when she met other representatives of Dadaism, including Marcel Duchamp. Two artists began their collaboration by designing sculptures from everyday substances titled by themselves as ‘readymades’.
Despite her sculpture compositions, shocking performances and modelling activity, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven produced strange poems and was a pioneer of a sound poetry. An American magazine The Little Review published her writing experiments in 1918 along with Ulysses by James Joyce.
In 1923, the artist came back to Berlin in search of the money sources. Instead of the huge incomes, the artist found an economical post-war crisis. During this period of poverty, Elsa was supported by her multiple friends and colleagues, including the art collector Peggy Guggenheim. The artworks of this period reflected the difficult situation of the artist – they became sombre and depressive, like her painting called Forgotten Like this Parapluice am I by You - Faithless Bernice (1924).
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven made her last attempt to earn the acclaim in Paris where she moved a year before her death. She planned to open her modelling school there, but the project, as well as her attempts to publish the new writings, remained unsuccessful.
Achievements
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a highly innovative and eccentric artist, a frontierswoman of the Dada movement in New York and the leading figure of avant-garde feminism of the early 20th century.
She revolutionized the notion of art and became life incarnation of Dadaism.
Elsa’s free behaviour changed the position of women in the art world and influenced the Performance art of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s creations were presented at the exhibition of 1943 called Exhibition by 31 Women organized by the Guggenheim Museum at the Art of This Century gallery in the New York City.
However, while alive, she was not recognized by the art circles and often lived in poverty. Her artworks were rediscovered by art critics and collectors only at the beginning of the 21st century. So, the first important biography of the artist was made by art historian Irene Gammel in 2011. The book titled Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven included the innovative poetry of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven which was not widely published before. The art critic from New York Times, Holland Cotter, gave Elsa a title of “Mama of Dada”.
The collection of von Freytag-Loringhoven’s artworks, as well as her personal papers, are nowadays preserved by the University of Maryland Libraries. One of her early sculptures, God, can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, United States.
Forgotten Like this Parapluie am I by You – Faithless Bernice
Dada Portrait of Berenice Abbott
Facing
sculpture
God (collaboration with Morton Shamberg)
Cathedral
Limbswish
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp
Enduring Ornament
Views
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s approach to life had an anti-patriarchal character. She also stood for polyamory.
Quotations:
"Every artist is crazy with respect to ordinary life."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"The Baroness is not a futurist. She is the future." Marcel Duchamp, a French artist
"People were afraid of her because she was undismayed about the facts of life – any of them – all of them." Djuna Barnes, an American author
"Else von Freytag-Loringhoven is the first Dadaiste in New York and [...] the Little Review has discovered her. This movement should capture American like a prairie fire." John Rodker, an English author and publisher
Connections
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was married three times.
On August 22, 1901, in Berlin, her first husband became August Endell, an architect. The couple had free relationships, and a year after the marriage, Elsa began a romance with her husband’s friend, a poet and translator, Felix Paul Greve, later known as a Frederick Philip Grove.
In 1906, Elsa and August divorced. The following year, on August 22, Elsa and Felix became an official couple.
The third and the last official husband of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a Baron from Germany Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven who she married in November 1913. He committed a suicide at the beginning of the First World War.
In fact, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven had romantic relationships with a great number of artists during her life.
