Bertolt Brecht

In the 1950s, Elizabeth Shaw was commissioned by the German Writers' Association to draw portraits of its members. This resulted in a series of pen and ink drawings with portrait caricatures, which were published by Aufbau Verlag in 1956 on the occasion of the IV Writers' Congress in Berlin, with verses by Paul Wiens, under the title "Zunftgenossen-Kunstgefährten". The pen and ink drawing of Bertolt Brecht, whom she observed and sketched during rehearsals at the theatre, belongs to this series. Shaw depicted Brecht in characteristic pose with a cigar in mirror image, as if he were meeting himself. While Elizabeth Shaw often drew from photographs for her political caricatures, it was important to her not to work from models for the portraits of writers, but to make sketches directly in front of the person being portrayed. She had made this her principle, since photos, as she herself said, "can be deceptive". The portrait caricatures show Shaw's strength in capturing the essentials quickly and precisely with succinct strokes. The positive response to these works was so great that in 1959 the Academy of Arts Berlin (East) also commissioned portraits of its members. 43 large-format lithographs are the result of this collaboration.