One Touch

"I and My Model" (c. 1930) by the German-Swedish artist Lotte Laserstein. In this self-portrait the artist is at work, while Traute Rose, her tennis coach, then model, then lover and companion, looks on. Laserstein is, of course, looking both into a mirror and at us. Traute Rose sees what we see. There are few details in this painting, but what one touch can say.... To escape the Nazis, the artist married a Swede and moved to Stockholm, but they never lived together. She was unable to save her sister, who died in hiding, or her mother, who died at Ravensbruck. After the war, she and Traute Rose were reunited. As an artist, Laserstein was "rediscovered" with a 1987 London exhibition.