As a student she began exhibiting in the annual Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1915, and by 1918, had produced a series of eight Expressionist-style prints illustrating Eduard Reinacher's war poem Der Tod von Grallenfels.
[2] Dissatisfied with the bourgeoise politics of these organisations, in 1927 Lex-Nerlinger and her husband became members of the Communist KPD and, in 1928, of the Bund revolutionärer Künstler (Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists),[3][4] whose aim was to use art as a weapon in the class struggle.
Though born Alice Pfeffer, and having taken her artist husband Otto Nerlinger's last name after their marriage, by 1927,[1] in order to distinguish her production from his and evincing a feminist stance, she took the un-gendered nom de guerre 'Lex',[5] but is now generally identified[1] by her hyphenated name.
The poultry breeder poses half-hidden behind chicken-wire, or the seamstress is bent over her sewing machine, dreaming, in double-exposure of the carefree happiness of her girlhood,[6] while the typist frustratedly scrubs at a misprint with an eraser.
"Die Arbeiten des 'Bundes revolutionärer bildender Künstler' bestanden nicht aus formalistischen, individualistischen Spielereien, sondern diesen Künstlern kam es darauf an, den revolutionären Klassenkampf mit der scharfen Waffe der politischen Fotomontage zu unterstützen" ("The work of the 'Federal Revolutionary Visual Artist' was not to play formalist, individualistic games, but to support the revolutionary class struggle with the sharp weapon of political photomontage.
(1928), for example, illustrates the everyday reality of life for the anonymous (and in her imagery, literally faceless)[12][1] proletariat: a drab exchange of machine production for the hasty gobbling of dry bread in work-soiled hands.
Using an air-brush to repeat the blank factory windows, faceless workers, tanks and shells, she explains the causes of a social evil with non-photographic means as forcefully as in her black-and-white photomontages, such as Giftgas ('Poison Gas) of 1929.
[18] Originally titled Menschen auf der Straße (People on the Street) and produced specifically for Die Straße, a printmaking exhibition she and other members of Die Abstrakten organized to appear within the 1930 Große Berliner Kunstausstellunger, her Arm und Reich (Rich and Poor) of 1929 makes class difference explicit through vignettes to make direct comparisons; the elderly well-to-do relaxes in a café while outside the war invalid begs; the child of the rich woman pedals his toy car along the street beside her, while the children of the poor share their pram with newspapers being sold by their heavily pregnant mother; the tennis player exercises for recreation while the worker labours over his jackhammer.
Repetitions underline the imbalance in the ratio of numbers of poor to rich, but none is printed exactly the same, as the photogram technique entails variations in density and different degrees of light 'bleed' under the cut paper templates.