Karl Schenker

Karl Schenker in aviator outfit - 1919. Photographer: Hermann Schieberth Karl Schenker (born Karol Schenker on 23 October 1886 in Sereth, Bukovina, Austro-Hungarian Empire; died 18 August 1954 in London) was an Austrian photographer, illustrator of fashion magazines and painter. The artist, who mainly worked in Berlin, was Jewish and had to emigrate from Germany to London in 1938 and received British citizenship in 1948.

Karol Schenker was born on 23 October 1886 in Sereth (now Siret in Romania) the son of tax inspector Jakob Schenker and Rosa Schenker (née Schleisberg). After the family moved to Lemberg (in the Austro-Hungarian part of the former Poland, now Ukraine), Schenker became a member of the Friends of Artistic Photography around 1900 and has regularly participated in the association's exhibitions from 1904. Karol Schenker exhibited his work at the International General Photography Exhibition for Amateur Photography in Kraków at the age of 18. In the amateur photography category, he was awarded a silver medal.

Early career

It is believed that Schenker studied at the Technical University of Lemberg. Using wigs, false eyelashes. and his skills as a painter, Schenker elevated the art of the store dummy to new levels of refinement and verisimilitude. Some of these images ended up in "Die Dame" and have become a subject of interest in exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale.

In 1923, Schenker met the Viennese Lilli Behrend, whom he married a short time later. During these years, Schenker concentrated on portrait and fashion photography. In 1925 the couple moved to New York and the photographer Mario von Bucovich took over Schenker's photo studio in Berlin. In America Karl Schenker mainly worked as a painter and draftsman reverting to his birth name Karol Schenker. At an exhibition dedicated to him in the Gainsborough Galleries, he showed a picture cycle that included portraits of Enrico Caruso, Giacomo Puccini and Gerhart Hauptmann, among others. His customers also included numerous celebrities in London, including the rally-driver Jacqueline Evans de Lopez and Australian Prime Minister John Curtin.

The Museum Ludwig in Cologne was able to buy around 100 photographs from the estate of photographer Hermann Koczyk from Oschatz in 2014 and dedicated a four-month retrospective to Karl Schenker in 2016.