Exhibited: “Gerda Wegener”, ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, 2016. Ill. in the catalogue p. 51 and discussed on pp. 48–52. Exhibited: “Gerda Wegener & The Danish Girl”, Millesgården, 2017.

On the cover of the spring auction catalogue, we are proud to present a rare and exciting work by Gerda Wegener. “I Sommervarmen (Lili)” (In the Heat of Summer (Lili)) from 1924 shows Lili Elbe with her back turned to the viewer, as a reclining and seductive odalisque. The face is shown in profile; the eyelids are heavy, almost drowsy, while the lips are painted red and the cheeks cherry-coloured. Lili's vulnerable nudity stands in stark contrast to the Rococo chair's vigorously flourishing ornamentation, while she holds an oriental fan in her hand and wears a pair of high-heeled silk sandals. Art history is filled with beautiful, nude female models who act as objects for the male artist's desires and the spectator's scrutinizing gaze. But here the gaze is split and becomes ambiguous: the artist is a woman, and the model is a trans woman: “The thing that has saddened me greatly, and you are to blame, wonderful artist! Imagine! I have found pleasure in looking at shapes, which in all fairness belonged to Ejnar!”. (Viggo Afzelius, Ekstra Bladet, 4.3.1913 quoted from Tobias Raun p. 50).

At a time when gender, sexuality, identity and roles are being negotiated like never before, the story of Gerda and Einar Wegener – and especially the paintings where the latter is used as a model – has only become more topical despite the almost 100 years that have passed since the artwork was created.

“In the Heat of Summer” was shown at ARKEN – Museum of Modern Art’s popular exhibition in 2016 and is discussed in Tobias Raun's text "The Trans Woman as a Model and Co-creator. About Resistance and Becoming in the Back-turning Lili Elbe” in the exhibition's catalogue. Among other things, Raun writes the following: “The portraits of Lili with her back turned to the viewer are stylistic modernist experiments, where the background is made up of a certain ornamented flatness that makes the model stand out. In both cases, Lili’s hip bends, which turns her body into a curved, undulating, ornamented shape. The back of the model appears both inviting, but also as a deterrent to keep us from accessing her body.”

The painting is on many levels extremely complex and contains a plethora of ​​themes, each of which could inspire a dissertation. Here we will simply encourage everyone to enjoy the work for its immediate picturesque beauty and leave it up to the individual to further explore the artistic nooks and crannies and the ambiguity of the story behind the painting.