It is difficult to tavoid hemes like gender and love when talking about Gerda Wegener. The gripping story of the artist couple Wegener is now widely known, helped along by Hollywood's portrayal in the film “The Danish Girl”.

As a draftsman, Wegener has her breakthrough in 1907–08, when she wins a drawing competition for Politiken. Before that, she attendes the Drawing and Painting School for Women and graduates from the Danish Academy of Fine Arts' art school for women. While she did not consider her time at the academy to be of particular importance to her artistic development, it is a time of great importance on a personal level, as she meets Lili Elbe (nee Einar Wegener) in the spring of 1902. The couple travels to the more free-spirited Paris in 1912, where Gerda Wegener builds a stable reputation for herself.

For many years, her work is excluded from the walls of art museums, but in 2015–2017 ARKEN shows Gerda Wegener in a solo exhibition that, in addition to being the largest exhibition of the artist's works, is a huge success with the public.