Edith Auerbach was a German painter, born in Cologne, Germany, to a wealthy Jewish family. She studied art history and specialised in the painting techniques of the Old Masters. In 1926, she moved to Paris. She participated in group exhibitions at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne, and in 1937 she took part in the revolutionary exhibition "Women Artists of Europe". Auerbach lived and worked in the Parisian district of Montparnasse for some years. During the interwar period, it was the ideal place for modern art, with many avant-garde artists, collectors and art dealers who no longer felt safe in their home countries, giving Montparnasse an international character. In Montparnasse she made many portraits of her artist friends Rudolf Levy, Moisej Kogan and Tsugouharu Foujita. In these pre-war portraits one can see the realist and expressionist influence of George Grosz and Felix Nussbaum. After the Nazi occupation of Paris, Auerbach was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. However, she managed to escape in 1943. After the war she returned to Paris and changed her name to Edith Delamare. Her artworks also changed; she visualised her experiences in the concentration camp in surrealist works.
