Part flight, part longing

On the photographer Herbert List’s path to exile

Herbert List

1936 was a decisive year for Herbert List: one year after the Nuremberg Race Laws went into effect, his private life was a matter of general suspicion. Artist friends such as Erika and Klaus Mann and Andreas Feininger had already fled the country, and List, a “one-quarter Jew,” now received warnings that the Gestapo were keeping tabs on his openly gay lifestyle and his disdain for the Nazis.

He abruptly fled his home country and his bourgeois existence as a coffee trader. Along the way, he took pictures including Brillen am Vierwaldstättersee (Glasses at Lake Lucerne)and Herr und Hund, Portofino (Man and Dog, Portofino) in Switzerland and on the Italian Riviera that evoke a mood of peace, friendship, and the Mediterranean beauty of life. But the summer of 1936 passed quickly. List was soon faced with the task of organizing his life again from scratch.

The works from the first ten years of his oeuvre shed light on the young man’s journey into exile in Greece; they accompany the artist’s development in a time of discovery, insecurity, and newly found freedom.