Elsa Thiemann

Elsa Thiemann (née Franke, 7 February 1910 – 15 November 1981) was a German photographer and former Bauhaus student. She also designed wallpaper based on photograms.

Personal life and education

Elsa Thiemann was born in Toruń, West Prussia, which is now part of Poland. In 1921 her family moved to the Neukölln suburb of Berlin.

She studied at the Bauhaus from 1929, receiving her Bauhaus Diploma in July 1931. In the first year she undertook Josef Albers' preliminary course, and then studied photography under Walter Peterhans, in a course that was affiliated with the Printing and Advertising workshop. She also attended painting courses given by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Her work was composed of collaged dark photograms produced using plants, thread, and blobs of paint.

Work

From 1931 Thiemann worked in Berlin as a freelance photographer and a press photographer and, in order to do such work during the Nazi period, she joined the Reichskulturkammer in 1934, as all working artists had to do. She had anti-Nazi views and Hans Thiemann's surrealist art work was considered degenerate,

Elsa and Hans Thiemann were married in 1947.

Thiemann's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.