Until she fled the GDR in March 1958, the life of enamel artist Lili Schultz was very closely tied up with Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle (Saale). With the exception of a few years, which included a period at Bauhaus under Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky, she studied and taught there for four decades. In the 1950s, the GDR leadership ruled that art comply with the dictates of Socialist Realism. Schultz' work in Halle proved to be non-conformist and came under attack within the context of this debate over formalism.

In West Germany, by comparison, the artist enjoyed an excellent reputation at the time. The art school ‘Werkkunstschule Düsseldorf’ offered her a job that was attractive because it involved teaching and creating art without dictates from the political realm. She left her homeland illegally on 15 March 1958 to take up this position. She did so, despite her advanced age, as she was convinced that she was no longer able to work in the GDR under the pressure she was subjected to there. Schultz went on to create some remarkable enamel works in West Germany thanks to her regained artistic freedom. In image plates from her late work produced in the Federal Republic, “abstraction in the visual and sensitivity in the figurative interfuse one another.” (from Ragaller, Die Emailkünstlerin Lili Schultz, 1991; ed. trans.). It is this abstraction in particular that would no longer have been possible in the GDR. In Düsseldorf, by comparison, Schultz was able to teach without political influences until she retired in 1965. She spent her retirement in Seeshaupt on Starnberger See, where she continued to be productive as an artist. Lili Schultz died in 1970 in Munich without having ever been to the GDR again.

Selected works:
Orpheus (1956)
Blau-Violett (1959)
Sphärisch (1961)
Verspült (1961)

Further reading:
Dietrich, Gerhard (Hg.): Farbe und Metall. Kunst aus dem Feuer. Lili Schultz. Email im 20. Jahrhundert. Lili Schultz (Schenkung Ragaller) und Schüler. Köln: Museum für angewandte Kunst 1991
Burg Giebichenstein, Hochschule für Kunst und Design (Hg.): Lili Schultz 1895-1970. Festschrift zum 100. Geburtstag. Halle: Burg Giebichenstein 1995
Beck, Arndt: Wie Phönix aus der Asche. 1937-1962: Die ersten 25 Lebensjahre von Helmut J. Psotta. In: Helmut J. Psotta: Radikale Poesie. Frühe Arbeiten 1954-1962. Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag 2013, S. 13 f.