Einar og gerda wegener biography

She had three siblings but was the only child to live to adulthood. She enjoyed art at a young age and began training. Wegener's work was often of confident and elegant women performing a variety of activities in either a Renaissance inspired style, Art Nouveau or Art Deco style. The images tended to show women posing or participating in artistic endeavors such as theatre, literature, and dance.

Along with shifting how women are represented in art, Wegener also challenged gender and sex identity roles in her work. Gottlieb's work was shown in the Charlottenborg Art Gallery inbut she gained little attention for her artwork. Her career as an artist began to mobilize after graduating from the Academy in and when she made appearances in the Politiken newspaper.

Wegener won two sketching competitions in the Politiken newspaper. She did art in Paris, but was less successful in Denmark, where people found her work very different and strange as it often portrayed her husband as a woman. She and her spouse were also close friends with artist Rudolph Tegner and his wife Elna. She met fellow artist Lili Elbe — then known as Einar Wegener — at art school.

The couple immersed themselves in the Bohemian lifestyle of the time, befriending many artists, dancers and other figures from the artistic world, often attending carnivals and other public festivals [ citation needed ]. During this time Elbe began to wear female clothing, and adopted her female name and persona, [ 7 ] becoming Gerda Wegener's favourite model, in paintings of beautiful women with haunting almond-shaped eyes dressed in chic fashions.

Inthe art world was shocked when they learned that the model who had inspired her depictions of petite femmes fatales was in fact her "husband". As Elbe adopted her female identity, Gerda Wegener commonly introduced her as Einar Wegener's cousin when she was dressed in female attire. Along with her spouse who was now living as Lili, the pair settled into a lesbian lifestyle in the more liberal city of Paris in In addition to her fashion world portraiture that was featured in Vogue, La Vie Parisienne, as well as the intellectually elite Journal des Dames et des ModesWegener started painting nude women often in sexualized poses.

Her erotic paintings also found their way into controversial art exhibitions, which at times caused a public backlash. Wegener relished the notoriety and the popularity that came with it. She threw lavish, over-the-top parties and became a well-known artist in France and Denmark.

Einar og gerda wegener biography

However, her public success had its consequences: after Christian X, the King of Denmark became aware of her marriage to Elbe, who had legally become a woman, the king declared their marriage null and void. Indue to the legal issues that beset them from the king's decision, the couple thought it best to go their separate ways and did so graciously.

After separating from Elbe, Wegener married Major Fernando Porta, an Italian officer, aviator and diplomat, and moved with him to Morocco. However, the marriage was short-lived and the couple divorced in Showing her continual support for Elbe, Wegener reportedly sent flowers to her on a regular basis. Wegener also wanted to encourage Elbe to feel better as the latter was recovering from her final surgery that would've made her reassignment complete; however, the surgery didn't go as planned, and as a result, Elbe died in She was very interested in fashion.

The couple moved to Paris in where the international bohemian became their new family. InGerda's commitment to France included a commitment to anti-German satirical press cartoons. Inat the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, she won several medals, including two gold medals for her stained-glass windows and for her illustrations.

Gerda targets a motif that fascinates her: the image of her husband in female transvestite who plays the role of muse. Upon disclosure of this revelation, the Danish king annulled their marriage in October Their marriage dissolved, and she divorced him in Returning to Denmark inGerda held her final exhibition in and passed away on July 28, David Ebershoff's novel "The Danish Girl"chronicling the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerda, became an international bestseller and was adapted into a screenplay.

Gerda Wegener Danish artist Date of Birth: Contact About Privacy.