Richard Lindner

Checkmate

Richard Lindner (November 11, 1901 –April 16, 1978) was a German-American painter.

The Meeting

Richard Lindner was born in Hamburg. His mother Mina Lindner was American and born in New York as daughter of German parents. In 1905 the family moved to Nuremberg, where Lindners mother was owner of a custom-fitting corset business and Richard Lindner grew up and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School). From 1924 to 1927 he lived in Munich and studied there from 1925 at the Kunstakademie. In 1927 he moved to Berlin and stayed there until 1928, when he returned to Munich to become art director of a publishing firm. He remained there until 1933, when he was forced to flee to Paris, where he became politically engaged, sought contact with French artists and earned his living as a commercial artist. He was interned when the war broke out in 1939 and later served in the French Army. In 1941 he went to the United States and worked in New York City as an illustrator of books and magazines, making contact with New York artists and German emigrants (Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Saul Steinberg). In 1948 he became an American citizen. From 1952 he taught at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1967 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven. In 1957 Lindner got the William and Norma Copley Foundation-Award. In 1965 he became Guest Professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. His paintings at this time used the sexual symbolism of advertising and investigated definitions of gender roles in the media. Richard Lindner died in 1978.