The Lady Gaga of the 1920s'

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.”

ddie 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.”

“Gerda refused to be defined by her rural past or what she was born into or what society wanted,” says Rygg Karberg, “just as Lili did. Both women created themselves from scratch.” Gerda was commissioned to produce illustrations for La Vie Parisienne, Le Rire and La Baïonnette, becoming hugely famous and considerably outearning her spouse. “What is more impressive is that she got ahead without trying to be more like the men to do it,” says Rygg Karberg. “She loved makeup and fashion, and didn’t see why embracing these traditionally feminine things should make her any less strong. She wanted it all.” The other string to Gerda’s lyre was eroticism. Her playful nudes, including graphic illustrations for the memoirs of Casanova, were celebrated throughout liberal society for their groundbreaking ploy of depicting female sexual pleasure – “which isn’t something you see too much of in art!”, says Rygg Karberg.

Source:http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/28/gerda-einar-wergener-danish-girl-trans-painter