Charlotte art museum exhibit first in US to highlight a rediscovered gay icon
During her too-short lifetime, a Swiss heiress named Annemarie Schwarzenbach worked as a writer and photojournalist in the 1930s when such activities were rare for women.
She traveled the globe during the lead-up to World War II, always with androgynous flair. Decades after her death in 1942 at age 34, Schwarzenbach’s work, as well as her fashion style, were rediscovered. She also became a gay icon.
In a 2018 New York Times obituary, for a series highlighting people previously overlooked by the paper, the Times called Schwarzenbach “an adventurous traveler whose writings, along with her androgynous glamour and troubled life, made her a gay cult figure after her death.”
Now, a new exhibition at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art serves as the U.S. premier of the first exhibition of Schwarzenbach’s photographs.
The Bechtler exhibition, “Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Departure Without Destination,” runs from April 2 to June 19 in the uptown Charlotte museum. It includes archival material, film and some 200 photographs out of about 7,000 from Schwarzenbach’s estate, which is held in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern, Switzerland.
Who was Annemarie Schwarzenbach?
The Bechtler and the Times obituary provided additional details about Schwarzenbach, who was born in 1908. Her parents were wealthy Zurich industrialists.
Her mother was a general’s daughter and descendant of the Bismarcks. She dressed young Annemarie in boys’ clothes, an androgynous style that would be associated with Schwarzenbach for the rest of her short life.
But Schwarzenbach turned away from her conservative family, moving to Berlin before the Nazis took over, then on to Spain, Russia and Iran. The Times said she was an anti-fascist who had “tumultuous love affairs with women ... (and) a complicated relationship with her family, who had Nazi sympathies.”
Schwarzenbach also battled drug addiction through much of the 1930s. And she had befriended the children of Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Thomas Mann, who, according to the Times, once called her “a ravaged angel.”
At one point, Schwarzenbach married a French diplomat; he too was gay, the Times said. Why marry? It was convenient. Her status as a diplomat’s wife allowed her an unusual freedom to travel. She lit out for extensive journeys in Europe and the U.S., as well as parts of Asia and Africa, between 1933 and 1942.
During those far-flung trips, Schwarzenbach focused on social and political subjects, including the rise of National Socialism, the workers’ movement in the United States and the role of women in society. Her photographs, though, also revealed a longing for foreign lands and the poetry of travel, according to the Bechtler.
She published some 300 articles in Swiss magazines and newspapers, and from 1933 on, they often were accompanied by her own pictures. But most of her photographs remained unpublished before her death.
In 1942, Schwarzenbach was killed in a bike accident on a Swiss mountain, the Times stated in its obituary. She had been showing off and riding with no hands.
Attention after her death
Around half a century after her death, Schwarzenbach’s literary output was rediscovered.
That’s when, the Bechtler said, she was celebrated as a writer, female pioneer and gay icon. Her gender-bending fashion sense and lifestyle even inspired a 2019 fashion line for Givenchy.
But her photographs were more recent revelations. They range from the tumult ahead of World War II to the search for identity, a life in exile and travel.
The exhibition’s title, “Departure Without Destination,” refers to Schwarzenbach’s life of restlessness, homelessness, departure and a search for hope in foreign lands, according to the Bechtler.
The show at the uptown Charlotte museum is presented in collaboration with the Zentrum Paul Klee museum in Bern, Switzerland, and the curator is Martin Waldmeier with Zentrum Paul Klee.
The exhibition is divided into six chapters: A Love Of Europe; The Happy Valley; Between The Continents; Travels In America; The New Earth; and Minor Encounters.
“The dialogue that unfolds between Schwarzenbach’s texts and photographs opens our eyes to the upheavals and conflicts of the 1930s,” said Bechtler Executive Director Todd Smith, in a news release. “At the same time, Schwarzenbach’s documentary viewpoint explores themes in a poetic and astonishingly contemporary way.”
Want to go?
Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 420 S. Tryon St.
“Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Departure Without Destination” exhibition, April 2-June 19.
Website: bechtler.org
Hours: Monday, Thursday-Saturday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday: 12-5 p.m., Wednesday: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
Cost: Free through April 1; then adults, $9, seniors 65 and older, college students with ID or educators, $7, youths 11 to 18, $5 and kids 10 or younger are free.
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This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 10:41 AM.
