Lette Valeska

Valeska Heinemann (August 20, 1885 – January 8, 1985), known professionally as Lette Valeska, was a German-born American photographer, painter and sculptor in the Hollywood community. When her husband's chemical plant was confiscated by the Nazi regime, she left her homeland of Germany and traveled with her husband and daughter before moving to New York City in 1937. In 1938 she left her husband and moved to Los Angeles, where she spent the rest of her life. She began a photographic career of children's portraits and quickly gained notoriety among Hollywood stars. She worked as an archivist for the Pasadena Art Museum's Blue Four Collection. At the end of World War II, she organized a friendship correspondence between children in California and Ryswyck, Holland out of gratitude for Ryswyck citizens' assistance to holocaust refugees. At age 50, Valeska began painting and at age 70 began sculpting. She was featured in the Emmy award winning NBC documentary "The Heart Is Not Wrinkled" in 1969. Never having been formally trained as an artist, her artwork expresses her soul rather than technical proficiency. Valeska and Galka Scheyer are credited with introducing German Expressionism to the Southern California art scene through her work with the Blue Four. She attended a girls school in Braunschweig from 1891 to 1901, after which she studied English, French and Italian language and literature for eight years with private tutors. In 1920, she married Ernst Heyman, who owned a chemical factory in Frankfurt. The couple had a daughter, Hella, in 1921. The family lived in Frankfurt until 1932, when she and Hella emigrated to Paris.

By the end of World War II, none of Valeska's family remained in Germany. Her father had died in 1930 in Braunschweig. Her eldest brother Ludwig had emigrated with his wife, Emilie Salfeld, and Emilie's children from a previous marriage, to Gouda in the 1930s. Her mother, Fanny, joined Ludwig's family after Kristallnacht. Ludwig, Emilie, and Fanny were all killed in a bombing of their Gouda home. Valeska's last surviving sibling, Walter, who had been heavily involved in Braunschweig's Jewish community, emigrated to the United States in 1936 and lived in New York until his death in 1968.

Photographic career

Shortly after Valeska arrived in Los Angeles, she secured permission to photograph children at UCLA's elementary school for education purposes. She created her own exhibit for parents and teachers in 1939, and later her photographs were used to illustrate the school's nursery and kindergarten education program to educators throughout California. Soon children throughout Los Angeles were encouraged to participate in the campaign, and over 2,000 children in Ryswyk received packages. Other American cities were inspired by this program and established their own friendship campaigns with other European cities affected by the war. Her relatives' and her own experiences with the Nazi regime motivated her to rediscover her Jewish roots. When she moved to Los Angeles, she studied Jewish history and literature, joined the Los Angeles Hadassah chapter and participated in other Jewish organizations. Valeska claimed that themes for her paintings were "born unconsciously" from a greater force, however.

Valeska began sculpting with clay in 1955 at the age of 70 with the guidance of Jane Ullman, a sculptor. She had no formal training in this medium either, and she continued to depict Jewish themes in her sculpture.