Ré Soupault
French-German photographer, fashion designer and author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ré Soupault (29 October 1901–12 March 1996) born known as Meta Erna Niemeyer, was a French-German artist, educated at the Bauhaus. She is known for a diversity of artistic works as a photographer, fashion designer, and also as translator.[1]
Ré Soupault | |
|---|---|
| Born | Meta Erna Niemeyer 29 October 1901 |
| Died | 12 March 1996 |
| Education | Bauhaus |
| Known for | photography, fashion designer, translations |
| Movement | Avant Garde |
| Spouse(s) | Married in 1926, divorced in 1931: Hans Richter, married in 1937: Philippe Soupault |
She was born in Pommerania in the then German town (present-day Polish) of Bublitz in 1901.[2] In 1921, she began to study at the Bauhaus in Weimar.[2] There, she became influenced by Johannes Itten, whose colours and shape theory would influence her early work.[2] Soupault was impressed by the Neo-Zoroastrian Mazdaznanism, according to which Itten and other Bauhaus members lived, and studied Sanskrit for two semesters at Jena university.[2] In the Bauhaus, Erna became known as Ré, as Kurt Schwitters[1] and the photographer Otto Umbehr used to call her.[2]
Berlin
During a visit to Berlin, she met the former Bauhaus member Werner Graeff, who introduced her to the Swedish experimental filmmaker Viking Eggeling.[2] After her participation in the first major Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923, Niemeyer became Eggeling's assistant.[2] She was fascinated by Eggeling's enthusiasm and finished the film “Diagonal Symphony” for the sick filmmaker within a year.[2] With Schwitters, she developed a close working relationship and together they moved to Hanover.[2] As the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 and developed a more functional design, she decided not to return and to settle in Berlin instead.[2]
Paris
Having begun to write under the pen name "Greta Green" for the Sport im Bild magazine in Germany, she moved to Paris as a correspondent for the Scherl Verlag in 1929.[2] She quickly established herself in avant-gardist circles in Montparnasse where artists met in the Café Dôme.[2] At a birthday party for Kiki de Montparnasse, she got to know the millionaire Arthur Wheeler, with whom she opened the fashion boutique Ré Sport in 1931.[3] She had designed fashion before, like modern culottes for the Parisian Paul Poiret.[2] Later, she designed and sold "rational clothing for the working woman",[1] and some of her collections were photographed by Man Ray.[3] When Wheeler died in 1934, she had to close the fashion studio.[1] In 1933, she got to know her second husband Phillippe Soupault, a French poet and journalist.[2] With him, she travelled through Europe and took photographs for his reports.[2]
At the Bauhaus, she got to know her first husband Hans Richter in 1922[1] with whom she got married in 1926.[2] The couple befriended architect Mies van der Rohe, painter Fernand Leger and composer Paul Hindemith amongst others.[2] In 1927, the marriage with Richter broke and by 1931 they divorced.[2] Her second husband was Phillippe Soupault, who she got to know at a reception at the Russian Embassy in Paris in November 1933[3] and married in 1937.[4]
Between 1938 and 1943, the couple lived in Tunisia, where Phillippe Soupault established the anti-Fascist Radio Tunis, speaking out against the Italian Radio Bari.[5] Following the arrest of Phillippe in March 1942 by German troops in Tunis, they fled to New York in 1943.[6] In the following years, the couple travelled through South America for the Agence France-Press.[1] After their return to the United States, Ré and Phillippe Souplault separated, and he returned to Paris.[2]
Having returned to Paris in 1955, she began to work as a translator and in 1948, she was commissioned by the German publisher Büchergilde Gutenberg to translate the diaries of the French author Romain Rolland.[1] Further, she translated the collected works of Comte de Lautrémont.[2] She stayed in contact with Phillipp Soupault, with whom she jointly produced a film about painter Wassily Kandinsky in 1967.[2] In 1973, Phillippe and Ré decided to live together again.[2] This time, each in their own apartment, but in the same house.[2] Phillippe Soupault died in 1990.[6]
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