page_title: Maria Slavona
section_title: First successes
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Slavona / Life / First successes
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Tauwetter bei Lübeck
context_page_description: Maria Slavona, born Marie Dorette Caroline Schorer was a German impressionist painter.
context_section_description: One of her companions on the trip was the Danish painter Vilhelm Petersen (1868–1923) and, as they became closer friends, they both decided to take assumed names for their artworks. He chose Willy Gretor and she became Maria Slavona. They also had an illegitimate daughter who later became an actress under the name Lilly Ackermann, after the man her mother married in 1900, the Swiss art dealer Otto Ackermann (1871-1963). Slavona's first exhibit came in 1893 at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, ironically under the male pseudonym "Carl-Maria Plavona". In 1901, she joined the Berlin Secession,  returned to Lübeck in 1906 and came back to Berlin in 1909. 
  Near the end of the 1920s, her health began to deteriorate and, having failed to find a cure with traditional medicine, turned to anthroposophy and naturopathy. Her health never improved, however, and her last years were spent painting flowers and landscapes in the vicinity of her home near Münsing.
  Her work was forgotten for many years, having been branded as "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) in 1933. During World War II, many of her paintings were destroyed, either intentionally or as a result of the war. It wasn't until 1981 that a significant retrospective was held by the Bröhan Museum in Berlin.
caption: Spring Thaw near Lübeck (1913)
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