At the age of five, Lotte Laserstein told a friend that she had decided to become a painter and to remain unmarried. She honored both pledges for the remaining 90 years of her life, becoming a successful artist specializing in monumental female nudes and evocative portraits.

After her father's death in 1902, Laserstein and her family moved from Prussia to Danzig; 10 years later, they settled in Berlin. There, having received her initial art training in a school run by one of her aunts, Laserstein became one of the few female students at the prestigious Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, where she was enrolled from 1919 through 1925. Working with Erich Wolfsfeld, Laserstein became an accomplished realist painter, winning the Academy's gold medal for her work. She soon had her own pupils, and her first one-person exhibition at a Berlin gallery in 1930 garnered critical praise. Meanwhile, to supplement her income Laserstein took various jobs making decorative art and, most significantly, illustrating an anatomy text.

Despite her increasing success, the rise of Nazism in Germany began to affect Laserstein's life. Because her paternal grandfather had been Jewish, Laserstein's mother's apartment and many of her valuables were confiscated by the state; it became difficult for Laserstein to find artists' materials, and in 1935 she was forced to close her studio. Fortunately, some years earlier a friend had introduced her to several Swedish art dealers who expressed an interest in handling her work. Therefore, in 1937 Laserstein moved to Stockholm, where she remained for the rest of her life, becoming a member of the Swedish Academy of Arts and developing a reputation as a popular and respected portraitist. Her sister eventually joined Laserstein in Sweden, but their mother died in a concentration camp.