Gerda Wegener: 'The Lady Gaga of the 1920s' (artist, role model)
Gerda Wegener: 'The Lady Gaga of the 1920s'
The Danish Girl tells the story of the painter Einar Wegener, who had the world’s first gender-reassignment surgery and became Lili Elbe. But his wife Gerda had a fascinating life and career of her own.
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Gerda and Einar Wegener in front of Gerda's painting Sur la route d'Anacapri at an exhibition in 1924
Eddie Redmayne is already being Oscar-tipped for his latest role in Tom Hooper’s biopic, The Danish Girl – the story of the painter Einar Wegener, who underwent the world’s first gender-reassignment operation to become Lili Elbe. But there was another woman behind Einar and Lili.
In The Danish Girl, Wegener’s wife, Gerda, a talented artist, is played by 26-year-old Swede Alicia Vikander, who very nearly steals the show as her partner’s devoted supporter. In real life, the story is not dissimilar. Gerda married Einar in 1904 and went on to become the nation’s most prominent exponent of art deco, pioneering the bending of gender boundaries and rethinking the female gaze.
“I like to think of her as the Lady Gaga of the 1920s,” says art historian Andrea Rygg Karberg, who has curated a new exhibition of Gerda’s work in Copenhagen. “Gerda was a pioneer who spent two decades as part of the Parisian art scene and revolutionised the way women are portrayed in art.” In short, Gerda Wegener was A Big Deal. “Throughout history, paintings of beautiful women were done by men,” says Rygg Karberg. “Women were typically seen through the male gaze. But Gerda changed all that because she painted strong, beautiful women with admiration and identification – as conscious subjects rather than objects.”
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The culmination of her success was at the 1925 World’s fair in Paris, the most important art exhibition of the era, where Gerda exhibited and won two gold medals and one bronze for her work. But just as Gerda’s star was rising, her partner was struggling.
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The Gerda Wegener exhibition is at Arken from November until May 2016. “After that, I hope we can take Gerda’s work and her inspiring story to the US and the UK,” says Rygg Karber.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/28/gerda-einar-wergener-danish-girl-trans-painter