Gerda Wegener – The Female Gaze on Women

A Controversial Life

The story of Wegener is one of a highly unconventional destiny and a pioneering break with the prevailing norms and gender roles, which are so relevant today. However, the artist’s conservative upbringing as a priest’s daughter in Hobro could not have foreseen the path her life would take. At an early age, she chose to move to Copenhagen to study painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Art for Women, and over time found her style as an illustrator with a decorative and elegant meandering line. For a number of years, she supplied satirical drawings to various magazines, and with her slightly decadent technique, she occupied a somewhat isolated position in relation to the accepted art trends of the day.

Beautiful Art Deco

With her light, elegant and neat lines and the cultivation of the erotic, tantalising and sensual sides of life, Gerda Wegner was from the start, both artistically and in her appearance, a woman of the world who set herself apart from the domestic and more tradition-bound norms of the day. In Paris, she achieved some success as a portrait painter, with her refined and elegant portraits of women, but mainly due to her work as an illustrator for the most fashionable magazines of the time.

The auction’s collection of works demonstrates Wegener’s mastery of the Art Deco style, embracing the individual, decorative and exclusive, enriching the senses and adding aesthetic glamour. It is more about fashion than about breaking with the styles of earlier times because the artist is seen as a creator of beautiful things. On Danish soil, pure Art Deco is something of a rarity. The term describes a collective expression of the new trends and stylistic preferences within decorative arts and crafts in particular, which were presented at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1925. But even architecture, fashion and interior design – indeed modern life as a whole – can be seen wearing the beautifying glasses of the Art Deco style. 

A Modern Human Interpreter

Wegener's models are most often women, archetypes or well-known faces, who she distorted to imitate the ideals of the day from fashion magazines and the film industry, of which the collection up for auction is an exemplary example. She was, however, at the same time, a vivid interpreter of the human being, who particularly liked to emphasise female beauty. She was aware of the power of the gaze – be it masculine or feminine – and her models manage to captivate the viewer across the surface of the painting. With their almond-shaped eyes, pencilled eyebrows and slightly parted, red lips, they imparted both shyness and confidence.

In addition to the actresses and art personalities of the time, she used her partner as a muse. In the many portraits of slender, long-limbed female figures, Lili Elbe often posed dressed in women’s clothing and wearing various wigs. Art history is full of beautiful, female nude models who appear as objects of the male artist’s desire and the viewer’s scrutinising gaze. But in these works, it becomes ambiguous. Partly because the artist is a woman, and partly because the model is a transwoman. At a time when gender, sexuality, identity and roles are negotiated like never before, the story of Wegener takes on a special relevance despite the almost 100 years that have passed since the creation of her art.