Claire Beck Loos (4 November 1904 – 19 January 1942) was a Czechoslovakian photographer and writer. She was the third wife of early modernist Czechoslovak-Austrian architect

Adolf Loos Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (; 10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect, influential European theorist, and a polemicist of modern architecture. He was inspired by modernism and a widely-known c ...

Biography

Claire Beck was born in

Plzeň Plzeň (), also known in English and German as Pilsen (), is a city in the Czech Republic. It is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 188,000 inhabitants. It is located about west of P ...

Kingdom of Bohemia The Kingdom of Bohemia (), sometimes referenced in English literature as the Czech Kingdom, was a History of the Czech lands in the High Middle Ages, medieval and History of the Czech lands, early modern monarchy in Central Europe. It was the pr ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

(now

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

) in 1904, one of three children of Olga (Feigl) Beck and Otto Beck. Claire became engaged to Adolf Loos (1870–1933) after he invited the Beck family to see a

Josephine Baker Freda Josephine Baker (; June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975), naturalized as Joséphine Baker, was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first Black woman to s ...

performance in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

in the spring of 1929. They were married in Vienna on 18 July of the same year over her parents' opposition to the much older Adolf. Because it was a mixed marriage (Claire was from a Jewish family, Adolf was not), the Jewish community refused to execute the marriage. They divorced in 1932. Loos's immediate and extended relations—the Beck, Hirsch, Turnowsky, and Kraus families—and her friends the Semlers were some of Adolf's first clients. They hired him to remodel apartment interiors in Plzeň and Vienna, and it was there that Adolf first began to open up the "interstitial spaces" between walls to create continuous rooms. In 1936, Loos published ''Adolf Loos Privat'', a literary work of "razor-sharp anecdotes" about her ex-husband's character, habits, and sayings that was illustrated with family photographs. Published by the Johannes-Presse in Vienna, the book was intended to raise funds for Adolf Loos's tomb, as he had died destitute three years earlier. Loos and her mother were forced to leave Plzeň and move to

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

at the beginning of World War II and were later deported to

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination c ...

, Claire in 1941 and Olga in 1942. They were separately transported from there to

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

, German-occupied Latvia, where they were presumably shot or gassed on arrival in 1942.

Legacy

In 2012–2013, some of Loos's photographs were included in the exhibition ''Vienna's Shooting Girls: Jewish Women Photographers in Vienna''. In 2011, ''Adolf Loos Privat'' was published in its first English translation under the title ''Adolf Loos: A Private Portrait''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loos, Claire Beck 1904 births 1942 deaths Austrian Jews Czech Jews Austrian women photographers Artists from Plzeň Theresienstadt Ghetto prisoners 20th-century Czech women artists 20th-century Czech artists 20th-century women photographers Writers from Plzeň Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust People who died in the Riga Ghetto 20th-century Austrian photographers