Ré Soupault
1901 – 1996 /German-French artist of the avant-garde
“It was Johannes Itten who taught me how to truly see. That completely changed my attitude towards the object I photographed. I was not indifferent, I was involved. … I never staged any picture. Everything I photographed came straight out of life.”
Growing up and early training
Ré Soupault, born 1901 as Meta Erna Niemeyer in Bublitz /Pomerania, studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1925. Her teachers included Johannes Itten, Wassili Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Walter Gropius and Georg Muche. During her studies, she produced the film “Diagonal-Symphonie” with Swedish avant-garde filmmaker Viking Eggeling. Whilst working as a fashion journalist for “Sport im Bild” in Berlin in 1925, she met Helen Hessel, Lotte Lenya, Erich Maria Remarque, Walter Mehring, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, and Sergeij Eisenstein, with whom she remained connected for life.
Paris years
In 1929 she moved to Paris, where she set up her first fashion studio “Ré Sport” in 1931, and was the most successful fashion designer of the time, inventing prêt-à-porter. Among other things, she created the trouser skirt and the transformation dress (“I declared war on fashion”). With her second husband – the writer and journalist Philippe Soupault – she traveled extensively through Europe and the USA from 1934 onwards, where she took photographs for his reports. Her circle of friends expanded to include Florence Henri, Gisèle Freund, Elsa Triolet, Max Ernst, Henryk Berlewi, Kiki de Montparnasse Foujita, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, André Kertesz and Alberto Giacometti.
A passion for travel and experimentation
From 1938 to 1942, the couple lived in Tunisia, from where they had to flee from the Nazi troops to Algeria and lastly to the USA in 1943. From 1948 to 1958, Ré lived alone in Basel. During her time in Basel, she wrote, translated, and published fairy-tale collections. She translated from French – among others – Lautréamonts The Songs of Maldoror, works by Tristan Tzara, Philippe Soupault, and studied philosophy from 1951 to 1957 with Karl Jaspers. At the same time, she began writing radio essays that were broadcasted in Swiss and German stations (including Radio Basel, Radio Zurich, SWR, HR, BR, Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Radio Bremen, Freier Sender Berlin) until the 1980s.
She returned to Paris in 1958 and starting living with Philippe Soupault again in 1973. Ré Soupault died 1996 in Versailles.
THANK YOU TO MANFRED METZNER (ESTATE OF RÉ SOUPAULT) FOR SUPPLYING THIS TEXT