Marie Langer. Buenos Aires, 1938.

Vintage gelatin silver print. Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.8 cm. The work shows minimal marginal loss. From the collection of Luis Priamo.

This famous profile portrait of the only female founding member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) was taken in Stern’s studio, located in the Ramos Mejía neighborhood of Buenos Aires, using primarily natural light. Today, this iconic work is held in prestigious international art collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Marie Lizbeth Glas Hauser—better known as Marie Langer or "Mimi" Langer (Vienna, 1910 – Buenos Aires, 1987)—was an Austrian-Argentine physician, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educator. Like Grete Stern, she arrived in Argentina while fleeing Nazism. She trained as a physician and psychoanalyst in Vienna. Following Hitler’s rise to power, she joined the Communist Party and traveled to Spain to serve as a physician with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. She later lived in exile in Uruguay and subsequently in Buenos Aires, where, in 1942, she co-founded the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association—an organization she would later go on to lead as president.

For biographical information regarding the artist and the collector, please refer to the entries provided in the two preceding items. The scholarly relationship between Luis Priamo and Grete Stern lends a special significance to this provenance.

Abel Alexander

President, Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography